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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, j 





THE NEW OBEDIENCE 



THE 

NEW OBEDIENCE 



A PLEA FOR 



SOCIAL SUBMISSION TO CHRIST 



BY 

WILLIAM BAYARD HALE 

MISSION PRIEST OF THE CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR, MIDDLEBORO, 
MASSACHUSETTS. 



MAR 5 1897* 



NEW YORK 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 
.897 



Copyright, 1897, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

All rights reserved 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 



£o f0e QAJemoiri} of 

WILLIAM MORRIS 



If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye 
do them. 



PREFACE. 



THIS plea has been uttered in part and in 
varying forms in several American cities. It 
here stands substantially as it was presented 
in St. Paul's Church, Boston, on the Friday 
noons of Lent, 1896, except that the address 
" The New Freedom 99 was not then given. 
" The Authority of Truth" was also the 
basis of addresses made before the St. Paul's 
Society of Harvard University, before the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society at Hobart College 
at Commencement, and at the Bi-Centennial 
Commencement of St. John's College. I 
have revised freely, but have retained the 
personal and hortatory form, and the cir- 
cumstantial idioms of the St. Paul's Noon 
Services. 

The interest, the doubt, I fear I must say 
the distress, and yet — on the part of some — 
the singular enthusiasm, which they evoked, 
have seemed to justify the printing of these 
words. I have nothing to add here. God 



viii 



PREFACE. 



prosper my book if its teachings be truth. 
God confound and defeat it if its counsels 
run not with His will. 

William Bayard Hale. 

Midi>leboro\ Mass., St. Andrew's Day, 1896. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

I. The Authority of Truth ... 3 

II. The Code and the Issue . . .29 

III. The New Commandment . . .53 

IV. The Coming Kingdom . . . .73 

V. The Present Duty . . . .93 

VI. The New Freedom . . . .125 

VII. The Certain Triumph . . . .159 
Notes 183 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



THERE has been what is known as the New 
Learning. Beginning in Italy, under the 
inspiration of the Greek teachers who had 
fled into Lombardy at the fall of Byzan- 
tium, it was taken up by the youths of all 
the countries of northern Europe, who, 
eager for learning, had crossed the Alps, and 
returning carried with them the light under 
which the whole world was to be trans- 
formed. Next to that of the fall of the 
Roman Empire, the date of the Revival of 
Learning is the most momentous since the 
birth of Him for whom the era is named, 
and the coming of whose Kingdom the cen- 
turies are consummating. To the fifteenth 
century the Spirit of Truth seemed to be 
fulfilling in peculiar measure His promise to 
lead men into all truth. 

The New Learning filled the world with 
beauty. It built the Basilica on the Tiber; 
it laid richer glories on the walls of San 
Marco ; it adorned the valley of the Arno 



4 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



with Brunelleschi's Church and the Cam- 
panile of Giotto. It multiplied Madon- 
nas and Annunciations and Nativities. It 
touched the secret springs of music. It 
produced Dante and Petrarch and Chaucer 
and Shakespeare, Savonarola and Colet, 
Erasmus and More, Michelangelo, Leonardo 
and Titian, Columbus and Galileo. It per- 
fected the art of multiplying books, till, by 
the agency of the printing press, knowledge, 
lofty thoughts, and forms of literary beauty 
became common among men as the good 
sunshine and the rain that waters the face of 
the whole earth. It discovered America. It 
founded universities, and reclaimed those 
already existing from barren disputings over 
the inanities of the schoolmen to true mental 
life. It erected from the ruins of the Empire 
the modern nations. It opened the human- 
ities, and set men again at telling of the 
human story. It began the latest and most 
profound phase of philosophy — the study of 
history. It made possible the modern sci- 
ences. In a word, it created a new world, 
a hitherto unprophesied society, an un- 
dreamed-of civilization. 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 5 



That society we are. In that civilization 
we live. The New Learning is not a phrase 
which describes a mere epoch, a transitory 
movement; it describes a state and temper 
which still obtain. We are the products 
of the New Learning; we are its representa- 
tives and inheritors. 

Some are very proud of that fact. Some 
of us are not so sure that we have much 
reason to be proud. The New Learning is 
no longer new. Much of its exuberance has 
passed away; much of its lofty conception 
of itself and its office has expired. It is 
not necessary at all to repudiate its achieve- 
ments, nor to deny its effects, but it may be 
justifiable to doubt whether it has proven 
itself all that at the outset it gave promise 
of being. Certainly, it is supremely sad- 
dening to reflect that it has effected the 
present abounding extravagances of the rest- 
less advocates of progress, the men who fill 
our ears with cackle of advanced thought, 
new theology, new morality and the New 
Woman. I shall be interested presently to 
show that these men are not true products 
of the modern thought movement, nor fair 



6 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



illustrations of its value. But they are its 
actual products to-day, and they do illustrate 
its present state. "New" is their watch- 
word, their creed, their battle-cry. There 
is nothing under heaven these last followers 
of the Via Nova are not minded to reno- 
vate. From cosmic philosophy to posters, 
behold they have made all things new. The 
brain of the latter-day disciple of novelty, 
rather than a home for Truth, has become a 
tavern which entertains scarcely over night, 
one by one, the host of fin de siecle fads. 
With no greater fickleness than levity, we 
fly from Omar Khayyam to Bacteriology, 
from Indian Folk-lore to Schopenhauer or 
Hegel, and then, the sun of philosophy hav- 
ing set, from Impressionism to Maeterlinck 
or the Song of Solomon. Every one hath 
a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, 
hath an interpretation. In the name of 
progress, we are bidden hail Yellow-Book 
Art, the Decadent Literature, Neo-Chris- 
tianity. The German, who so well illus- 
trates his own proposition, is not far wrong. 
Much (new) learning hath made us mad. 
Is it surprising, in view of this sort of 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 7 



thing, that there are among the serious and 
sincere those who are beginning to suspect 
that the New Learning is a good deal of a 
failure ? It is a singular fact, if it is not a 
significant one, that the confident pursuit of 
knowledge has given birth to a school of 
men who profess to be content to know only 
that they can know nothing. More note- 
worthy than the rise of agnosticism, is the 
disposition to-day, unmistakably manifested 
in certain quarters, to discredit modern ac- 
complishments, and to return to the mediae- 
val. Evidence of this in art is given by the 
pre-Raphaelite movement, by the growing 
influence of the classic school in architec- 
ture and by the romantic revival in litera- 
ture ; and in religion, by the Catholic revival 
on one side, and on the other the reproduc- 
tion of the Greek theology. The real think- 
ers to-day are not talking about new thought. 
The really advancing are not singing hymns 
to progress, but (the situation has a certain 
irony and delicate pathos) are trying to dis- 
cover whether there be such a thing as prog- 
ress. Incomplete, on the verge of its great- 
est triumphs, the New Learning has lost 



8 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



very much of its steadiness, its soberness, 
its trustworthiness; it has become largely 
frivolous. 

But now when we ask why it has become 
frivolous, we confront again the phenome- 
non which I have deprecated — the disposi- 
tion to separate Truth and Life. Why is our 
latest learning empty and vain and mad ? 
Because it has become an eagerness for 
knowledge, considered merely as a pleas- 
antly exciting novelty; instead of (what it 
should be) an enthusiasm for Truth as a 
divine law to be loved and obeyed. To 
know the Truth and not to do it, is to de- 
range and mutilate the human mind, body 
and soul. God has so ordered the world 
and so framed man, that perception with- 
out application is constitutionally injurious. 
Nothing is more certain than this; it is a 
commonplace of philosophy ; it is illustrated 
by the effect of music and of all physical, 
mental, and spiritual stimulants. For per- 
fect sanity and health, perception and action, 
seeing and doing, knowledge and obedience, 
must go hand in hand. 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



Now, I do not accuse the prevailing intel- 
lectual activity of being ignorant. It gives 
us no little interesting information ; it is 
entertaining; its announcements are faintly 
thrilling, and, I doubt not, for the most part 
true enough. But at the best they are only 
interesting and clever. I fault it because it 
has nothing for us but these nice, exhilarat- 
ing, clever things. I suspect it because it 
gives us too many men who consider they 
have done a day's work if they have made 
an epigram ; I suspect it because it knows 
more of the construction of the Elizabethan 
proscenium than it knows of the human 
tragedy of to-day; because it has more 
energy for a study of the philosophy of the 
comic in fiction and the drama than it has 
for the wiping away the tears of living men 
and women. 

Oh! it has studied modern society — and 
from more such studies God defend us ! It 
knows scientifically every sort of character 
that walks the streets or stands in drawing- 
rooms. It has watched the interesting phe- 
nomena of their consciences and their hearts; 
it has measured and analyzed their agonies, 



io THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



and has gathered much data most useful in 
supplying us with decorative and becoming 
emotions. But what does it all come to ? 
Who acts ? Who takes the revelations of 
the modern novel home to himself ? 

The case is by no means new. It is as 
old as the New Learning. The earliest rep- 
resentatives of the movement were Pius II., 
Sixtus IV., Julius II., Alexander VI., — 
monsters under the tiara. Its first patrons 
were the Medicis and the Borgias. It had 
in those days its Marcilio Facino who hung 
a lamp alike before Plato and the Blessed 
Virgin, its Cardinal Bempo who declined to 
read the New Testament for fear of corrupt- 
ing the elegance of his Greek. While Wiclif 
was translating the Bible, Boccaccio was 
penning the Decameron ; while the knight- 
liest of men was recording the fair dream 
of Utopia, the most depraved of politicians 
was writing the Principe. The fact is, prog- 
ress in learning by no means goes hand in 
hand with triumphant morality. Increas- 
ing wisdom, culture, love of the Beautiful 
and interest in unfolding Truth do not of 
necessity imply higher living. I forget for 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



the moment the deeper truth that to know 
truly is to do truly, and that that is not 
Knowledge which has not passed into Life, 
and I say this. Deeply considered, all wrong 
living is from lack of knowledge ; sin is es- 
sentially error, and the evil-lived Humanists 
were not wise. I lay this consideration mo- 
mentarily aside, and I say that it is a com- 
monplace among those who reflect upon the 
phenomena of human life, that there is a 
learning which exhilarates and tickles the 
brain, but makes no appeal to the will ; that 
there is a disposition to be interested in 
Truth as an abstraction unrelated to the 
concrete duties of life. I have not meant 
to exaggerate the degree in which this mod- 
ern day yields to that disposition. The 
form of my arraignment may have been too 
severe, but no observing person will charge 
that it is groundless. Our devotion to 
Truth to-day is sincere; our zeal for scien- 
tific accuracy is great; our tastes are deli- 
cately correct ; our emotions are carefully 
trained. We know the poems, the pictures, 
the sentiments, we ought to admire, and 
the degree to which we ought to admire 



12 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



them. But with all our keenness of appre- 
ciation of abstract Truth, it is certain that 
we do not insist that perception shall pass 
into action. From its incipiency, this fail- 
ure has attended the Humanistic movement, 
and the prevailing characteristic of this its 
latest day is that it is well informed, keen, 
devoted to education, subtile in analysis 
and speculation, and not correspondingly 
serious in living; its intellectual vigour, not 
guided by serious purpose and attached to 
the springs of action, is being frittered away 
in the follies which make men of more depth 
of thought and character suspicious of its 
cleverness, distrustful of its achievements, 
and which dispose them to return to the 
remote past. 

I am expressing no agreement with this 
disposition ; I am trying to account for it. 
Were my opinion required, it would be that, 
with all its disappointments, the thought 
movement of the last four centuries has 
been one of unmistakable progress. Much 
of the vaunted New Truth, indeed, is in point 
of fact very old. Not yet have we mod- 
erns quite re-attained the rich splendour of 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 13 



thought of the Christian Greeks, their vigour 
of vision into things profound. Not yet do 
we wield again as easily as they the mighty 
language of the Fathers. Yet we are to- 
day, as never since their age, reproducing 
the largeness of outlook and the modes 
of thought of that early time ; and we, 
moreover, possess a fulness of accurate 
knowledge concerning the universe with 
which it was unacquainted. Almost we are 
great. Almost w r e stand masters of the 
centuries in thought. Almost! Mere fail- 
ure is so terrible! Real attainment lies just 
beyond. Shall we fail ? Shall we fall back ? 
I praise the New Learning, but I point out 
that it has reached its limits, and has not 
reached the goal. Alone it never can. It 
is not a complete movement. I go back to 
the profound truth put aside awhile ago. 
To know is to do. Complete Knowledge 
can come only with utter Obedience. I plead 
for a union of hearts to make possible the 
consummation of the New Learning; — I 
plead for a New Obedience! Yes! let us 
call it by that name. Let us found here, 
now, in these last years of the century, a 



14 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



movement to whose banner we can summon 
the brave and great-hearted. Claiming for 
a nobler use that word which a novelty-lov- 
ing age has so profaned by fastening to its 
follies, acknowledging its instinct, which is 
still divine, let us hold up before it some- 
thing New, which is yet stern and royal, 
worthy to command large souls, — a New 
Obedience to the Truth of Almighty God. 
Let the New Learning pass into a New Loy- 
alty. Promulgating no new doctrine; pro- 
posing no novel theory, no untried social 
scheme, no extension or interpretation 
hitherto unsuspected ; let us ask only for a 
new, a passionate enthusiasm of Obedience, 
which shall pour its tides around the world, 
and set men demanding why the thoughts, 
the dreams, the hopes of the past, should 
not be given realization and actuality. 

All these wonderful things which modern 
Science has discovered, and Art pictured, and 
History illustrated, and Philosophy proven 
— either they are true, or they are not true. 
If they are not true, then let us throw them 
away, and have done, and go back to bar- 
barism. But if they are true, then they are 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



terribly and absolutely and everyhow true, 
and have tremendously to do with our daily 
lives and duties, as well as with our tastes and 
mental pleasures ; then they are not beautiful 
fancies floating bodilessly in the air, but 
eternal principles demanding to be given flesh 
and bone in the deeds of those to whom they 
have revealed themselves. Let us have done 
forever with this dilettante nonsense, and 
either openly defy, or honestly accept Truth 
for what it is — stern, severe, and inexorable 
as it is fair, and requiring not to be talked 
about, but to be practised, not to be wrought 
into clever treatises, but to be obeyed. Has 
not all our learning taught us this as its 
supreme lesson ? — that Knowledge must 
pass into Life ? Does not the highest philos- 
ophy alike of Art and Society, announce 
that /Esthetics and Ethics, the logic of 
Beauty and the logic of Duty, are at base 
one ? Is not the final declaration of Science 
this ? — the universality of Law; that is, the 
Authority of Truth ? Has History any 
other lesson than that of the vanity of de- 
fiance by kings or empires or churches, of 
the divine Will who orders human concerns ? 



i6 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



Has our modern psychological introspection 
any newer teaching than that given by One 
long ago, that if any man will do the will, he 
shall know of the doctrine ; — that is, that the 
price of Truth is its practice ; that nothing 
is so illuminating as Obedience ? 

Has not the time come to hearken to 
these voices ? Is not this age, so great even 
in its follies, of stuff to be great also in 
nobler fashions ? Is there not heroism 
among us, children of the world's old age, 
to set about sternly enquiring of every rev- 
elation of the true and the beautiful that is 
made, " What wilt thou have me to do ?" 
and then to set as sternly about doing it, 
without hesitation or regard for expediency, 
stopping at no sacrifices, careless of appar- 
ent results ? Are there not among us men 
who, feeling Knowledge within them calling 
to Action, will heed its importunity, and 
highly resolve under God, that His Truth 
shall be obeyed ! 

You see instantly how vast are the results 
for which the New Obedience looks, as it 
reaches out and claims its disciples from the 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



17 



ranks of men who, from varying points of 
view, have seen each his aspect of Truth, 
and are now to practise it. What would the 
world be if the visions that come to our stu- 
dents in these days of scientific wonders and 
historical illumination were to be to them 
what the vision on the Damascus road was 
to St. Paul? — if, as they trace and measure 
the movements of the past, and explore the 
secret chambers of nature, finding every- 
where unity, purpose, promises of the tri- 
umph prepared for Love, in library and lab- 
oratory they should hear the voice of God 
calling to them : " This is My eternal Truth, 
My command to thee. Take it up as the 
rule of thy life. Listen, and obey! " 

What would it be if his zeal for law and 
facts were to inspire every scientist with the 
determination to found his personal char- 
acter upon them ? — if philosophers felt the 
obligation to set forth Truth in their lives, 
as they do in their books? — if composers of 
music were to undertake to be themselves 
as full of harmony as are their works, or 
painters to become in character as beautiful 
as the pictures with which they delight us ? 



i8 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



We have made the world splendid by a men- 
tal, a theoretical devotion to Truth ; but we 
shall make it incomparably more magnificent 
and beautiful when we give ourselves body 
and soul to Truth in the practical relations 
of commerce, politics, and society. 

Consider what marvellous secrets of the 
world would be wrung from it by the opera- 
tion of that principle to which I have in a 
word referred, — the illuminating power of 
Obedience. " They said unto Him, Master, 
where dwellest Thou ? He saith unto them. 
Come and ye shall see." Truth must be fol- 
lowed; then it leads to deeper Truth. Of 
every new revelation in the career of the race 
in the path of knowledge, it must say, " I was 
not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." 

You apprehend, I am sure, that the sub- 
ject is too great to be more than suggested 
in an address like this, to be more than 
sketched in such a course as this is to be. 
My purpose is, however, on these Fridays 
in Lent to indicate a little more definitely 
what the results of such an Obedience as I 
have proposed will be in what we are accus- 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



19 



tomed to think of as the distinctively Chris- 
tian field; that is, what will ensue when men 
who call themselves Christians begin seri- 
ously to accept and really to obey the plain 
commands of the historical personage Jesus 
of Nazareth, commands which heretofore we 
have been satisfied to quote with appropri- 
ately pious unction, and dismiss with relig- 
ious alacrity. Here also I can do no more 
than indicate, and if these mere hints inter- 
est, or, it may be, trouble and amaze, anyone, 
— how much more mightily shall the world 
be moved when some God-appointed pro- 
phet shall pursue the demands of Obedience 
to the end, and make the ultimate and in- 
evitable applications to business and society 
of the Christian principles which we now 
profess,- — and hold so lightly! 

As we pursue our enquiries, we shall be 
compelled to severe arraignment of the 
maxims upon which the intercourse of soci- 
ety is conducted, and the theories upon 
which its institutions are founded. We shall 
discover that the literal and heroic accept- 
ance of Christ's words as meant to be obeyed, 
will force us to profoundly modify the con- 



20 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



duct of our individual lives, and to be pre- 
pared for far-reaching changes in society, 
which is now organized upon principles 
directly contrary to those proposed by 
Christ. We shall be led to superlatively 
heart-searching enquiry into our real rela- 
tion to our religion; we shall be obliged to 
consider whether we truly hold, or merely 
profess it. For the very essence of religion 
is the subordination of the present inter- 
ests of the individual to the larger interests 
of mankind ; in that scientific and beauti- 
fully accurate as well as thoroughly sup- 
ported language with which Mr. Kidd has 
lately made us familiar, Religion is that 
which provides an ultra-rational sanction for 
the subordination of the interests of the in- 
dividual to the interests of the social organ- 
ism ; a sanction, that is, for social conduct. 1 
In plainer words, a religion is a belief which 
moves men to be unselfish, which teaches 
them to sacrifice themselves for their broth- 
ers. As we look about on the tragic spec- 
tacle of humanity's life-drama; as we see 
the conditions under which the far greater 
portion of its children come into the world ; 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 21 



as we consider the hard lot of the patient 
millions who bear the burden of the world's 
toil, and the scarcely less unhappy circum- 
stances which condemn their envied neigh- 
bors to the care of wealth, and bind them 
down to places in a system in whose grasp 
also their hearts are crushed and ground ; as 
we hear the recriminations of the envisaged 
classes, and see based on the fabric of politi- 
cal equality the most obvious social and 
material inequality; as we see the pursuits of 
peace carried on upon the theory of war, and 
with the same mercy, — shall we not have 
reason to ask ourselves why, if we truly 
believe in our religion, its sanctions do not 
induce us to social conduct ; why, after nine- 
teen centuries in which to contemplate the 
life of our Blessed Lord, the adorable mys- 
tery of His humiliation, the stupendous and 
unexampled sacrifice of Calvary, we have not 
learned to practise Love and Sacrifice, why 
we have not seriously set about building up 
the Kingdom for whose foundation He laid 
down His life ? That enquiry we shall have 
to make. 

We shall have to examine, sometimes 



22 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



word by word, Christ's spoken and recorded 
commands, which, perfectly understood in 
their literal sense by His contemporaries, 
— who, understanding, hated and crucified 
Him, — worldly theology has refined upon 
until they mean very little that is in conflict 
with selfishness and ease. The restoration 
of their primitive meaning and force to those 
commands, and the unquestioning submis- 
sion to them of men, of states, of the Church, 
we shall find demanded, not only as at all 
times by fairness and honesty, but in an 
especial manner demanded by the exigencies 
of this hour of social travail. The world is 
tumultuous with undefined hopes; murmur- 
ous with inarticulate expectancy. The vis- 
ion upon men's souls of an ideal society, is 
stirring them with divine discontent. That 
vision is of nothing else than of that for 
which Christ taught us to pray, " Thy King- 
dom come" and the New Obedience looks 
for nothing less than its peaceful and steadily 
more perfect realization as the fact becomes 
recognized that Jesus Christ was a social 
teacher, and that He gave literal, plain, ex- 
plicit and exact directions for social conduct. 



THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH. 



These directions we must enquire into, and 
fit ourselves intelligently to obey, by study- 
ing the example of Obedience set by Him 
who gave them. For Christ himself ' ' learned 
obedience by the things which He suffered ; 
and having been made perfect, He became the 
author of eternal salvation unto all them that 
obey Him" 



O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive 
the prayers of thy people who call upon thee ; and 
grant that they may both perceive and know what 
things they ought to do, and also may have grace 
and power faithfully to fulfil the same \ through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen. 



II. 

THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



A FEW months ago, a distinguished Arian 
divine, preaching at Harvard University, 
took up for consideration certain of those 
acts of Jesus of Nazareth which seem con- 
trary to human wisdom, and certain of those 
commands of His which do not commend 
themselves as practicable, nor, all the cir- 
cumstances of modern life considered, as 
expedient. " What," said the preacher, 
" shall we say of these ? Are we bound by 
them, in defiance of our common sense and 
our enlightened Christian judgment? No! 
We must conclude that these are the mere 
details, incidental and unessential ; partly of 
local and temporary expediency, and partly 
the enthusiastic excesses of a reformer, the 
extravagances of a God-intoxicated idealist. 
And besides, Jesus was a poet. Many of 
His sayings are poetical; whole discourses 
fall into the form of verse. The beautiful, 
the matchless spirit of Jesus's life will ever 
remain an inspiration to the highest living; 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



His actual words and acts must not, of 
course, be allowed to weigh against our 
practical common sense." 2 

It is a comfortable teaching. It rather 
effectually appeals to us all. In fact, it ex- 
presses the notion, — not in many cases, per- 
haps, admitted in words, — upon which we 
order our lives. But I have stated, only to 
challenge, it ; only, in the name of the Church 
and the Catholic faith, to take distinct and 
unequivocal issue with it. It is a teaching 
which those who believe in Christ and His 
divine authority cannot accept. It is a 
teaching which the Church denies on every 
page of her formularies. It is a teaching 
which is plainly repugnant, not only to a 
few of His phrases and to isolated acts, but 
to the whole course of the life of Him whose 
spirit it professes to honour. One who is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever, could 
have done nothing of merely temporary and 
local significance. The Type and Ideal and 
Pattern of humanity could have indulged in 
no extravagances. If Jesus Christ be what 
He claims to be, we are not at liberty to 
measure His acts and words by any standard 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



31 



of our own ; we must rather accept them as 
the standard by which our impulses and 
opinions are to be measured and judged. 
The exact conditions amid which He lived 
will never surround any of us; the sequence 
of events which, so far as external influences 
did so, determined His career, will never fol- 
low any of us. This gives us no right to 
disregard His example; the numberless cir- 
cumstances and events that influence us do 
find their parallels in those of His Galilean 
days. While as for His spoken words,, few 
of them have special relation to the events 
that called them forth, or are qualified by 
the circumstances of their utterance. They 
are almost entirely sermonic,— statements of 
universal principles, and of the application 
of these to situations of which human lives 
are full. 

Take that series of commands made by 
Jesus at the beginning of His ministry. 
The Sermon on the Mount was given out 
under the open sky, in the daytime, before 
a gathering of plain men whom Jesus well 
knew would take His words as uttered liter- 
ally and in all sincerity, — men quite incap- 



32 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



able of the fanciful conceits by which we 
moderns evaporate their meaning. Com- 
mon sense requires us to believe that He 
intended His words to be interpreted by 
precisely those canons which are applied to 
the words of other men. Decent respect for 
Christ's good faith cannot admit that He 
used human words, addressed to human 
beings, in any other sense than a downright, 
plain, human one. He who is the Truth, 
speaking the truth, spoke the language of 
an honest man. 

Beginning His teaching by the declaration 
that the poor in spirit are blessed, He bade 
His hearers rejoice and be exceeding glad 
when they were persecuted. He told them 
not to resist him that is evil ; to love — to love, 
not to tolerate, to love — their enemies; to 
turn the other cheek when one had been 
smitten ; to give the coat when the cloak was 
taken away. We are asked to believe that 
this is poetry. So it is. It is perfectly easy 
to see its metrical form ; justifiable to delight 
in its literary beauty; on occasions, I have 
myself lectured on the art of Hebrew versi- 
fication, and contended that this discourse 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



33 



illustrates it. It is the highest type of 
poetry, — but it is that because it is the 
speech of truth, twin-born with the music 
in which it is uttered. Scan it, count its 
numbers, sing it, if you choose ; there it is, 
nevertheless : 3 Ye have heard, An eye for an 
eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; but I say to you, 
that ye resist not him that is evil. Give to 
every man that asketh thee, and of him that 
taketh away thy goods, ask them not back. 
From him that would borrow of thee, turn 
not thou away. If ye lend to sinners, to them 
from whom ye hope to receive, what thanks 
have ye? Even sinners lend to sinners, to 
receive as much again. Love ye your enemies, 
and do them good, and lend to them, never de- 
spairing. {This is a hard saying ; who can 
hear it ?) Bid to your feasts those who can 
make no return. Do not gather a fortune ; 
lay up no treasure on earth. Take no thought 
for clothing, nor for food. Live from day to 
day ; to-morrow will take thought for itself. 

Now either this is lunacy, or it is divine 
wisdom. His friends of those days said, 
" He is beside Himself/' It is a favorite 



3 



34 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



charge against men who are not satisfied 
with things as they find them. Festus was 
only one of many who thought St. Paul 
mad. No reformer has escaped the impu- 
tation. But especially it is not strange that 
the friends of Jesus questioned His sanity. 
No programme ever equalled His in bold- 
ness and apparent folly. Let us admit it. 
Coming from anyone else, these sayings 
would be suppressed as insane and danger- 
ous. Coming from Christ, they are merely 
disregarded. 

But we have by no means seen the worst 
of this madness. Consider the inducements 
which Christ holds out, the rewards He 
promises, to those who will follow Him. He 
certainly pledges that God will give them 
what is good for them, but He makes it 
plain that that will most often be what we 
esteem the most dreadful of ills. Guarding 
against any possible misapprehension about 
it, He is constantly telling His hearers that 
poverty, hatred from all men, enmity in 
their homes, persecutions, scourgings, and 
death in the world await them. Some of 
those who heard this, and believed Him, 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



35 



walked no more with Him, but went back. 
Some of us, if we believed it, would hasten 
to join the retreat. They called the Master 
Beelzebub, he reminded them ; what would 
they not call the servants! Here is one of 
the tests He gave them: " Woe unto you, 
when all men shall speak well of you ! " 

Warning them of persecution, He told 
them not to be anxious how they should 
make their defence before their judges, for 
it would be given them in that hour what 
they should speak. 

One day He came in when they had been 
disputing as to who was the greatest. He 
took a little child, and set him before them 
as a pattern, and told them that they must 
become like that ; told them that he who is 
the least is truly great, and that he who would 
be first should be last of all. The night 
before the Crucifixion, He went to each, and 
solemnly washed his feet, and when He had 
finished, said, " If I then, the Lord and the 
Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also 
to wash one another's feet" The rite is 
preserved by a part of Christendom, in its 
outward form ; its practice as a rule of life, 



36 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



— the practice of service even to humilia- 
tion, — does not seem to have commended 
itself to Christians generally. 

Jesus took no account of money, either 
for His own use or for the extension of His 
Kingdom. He denounced the love of it. 
He forbade its accumulation. When the 
Pharisees, who, St. Luke says, were lovers 
of money, scoffed at Him because of this 
teaching, He told them that " that which is 
highly esteemed among men is abomination in 
the sight of God!' Jesus provided no fund 
for carrying on the work of His Church. 

With equal audacity He declined to recog- 
nize payment as the proper reward of toil. 
If His utterances about laying up treasures 
are confusion to capitalists, the parable of 
the labourers who went at different hours into 
the vineyard, and yet received every man 
the same penny, upsets all human labour 
schemes. With perfect indifference, He 
once, at least, allowed a large sum to be 
wasted, as some thought, in a pleasant oint- 
ment for His feet. 

As to His judgment concerning those pos- 
sessed of wealth, we have to reckon with 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



37 



these facts: He said, twice at least, prob- 
ably oftener, to His amazed followers, that 
it was a hard thing, a thing impossible ex- 
cept with God, for a rich man to enter the 
Kingdom. The only rich man who, so far 
as we know, volunteered discipleship, turned 
away in sorrow when he was told to sell his 
estates for the benefit of the poor. As the 
verdict of God upon success in the accumu- 
lation of wealth, He pronounced the man 
who was enlarging his storehouses, — a 
" fool/' One day "He lifted up His eyes 
on His disciples and said, * Blessed are the 
poor (pi 7tTGQx°i > literally, the beggars). 
Woe unto you that are rich / 9 " Those are 
His words. I find no pleasure in them ; no 
satisfaction, certainly. They are strange 
and amazing words; but upon considering 
them and the many like them, we may be 
prepared to believe that Jesus was not giv- 
ing expression to a sentiment, but to one of 
the primary laws of His Kingdom, to a con- 
viction which must take possession of those 
who would be its members, when He said, 
" Not in the abundance of a mans possessions 
consist eth his life" 



3 8 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



Strange and bewildering indeed to ordi- 
nary standards are Jesus's conceptions of 
human life and its proper conduct. As I 
have meditated upon His life and words, I 
have been at a loss to conclude which were 
the most wonderful: the character of the 
Kingdom He talked of; His calmness of 
spirit and absolute simplicity of manner in 
describing its constitution; or the serene 
confidence with which He seemed to look 
for obedience and to dream of nothing but 
success. 

The words which we have been consider- 
ing were uttered without qualification of any 
kind by one whom we call Lord and Master. 
I submit to you, as in profound gravity I do 
to myself, that we are here face to face with 
an issue than which none in heaven or earth 
can be more serious. Are these words to 
be obeyed, or are they still to be ignored, 
despised and rejected ? Are they to be 
compounded with Machiavellianism and 
made palatable with glosses from Poor 
Richard's Almanac, or taken as they stand ? 
Is here not the old issue between faith 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



39 



and lack of faith ? We pretend to accept 
Christ as the Way, His teachings as the 
Rule of Life, and we deny them, openly 
and unblushingly repudiate them, at every 
turn. We hardly even trouble ourselves to 
think out a method of evading them. We 
sit in judgment upon them; such as do not 
seem convenient and expedient, we fancy 
He could not have meant, and we therefore 
conclude that He did not mean them. 

With perfect freedom I admit that it is 
not easy — nay : that it is quite impossible — 
to vindicate the wisdom of many of these 
precepts. Are we therefore free to cast 
them away ? Is it necessary that they should 
accredit themselves to our judgments ? Wis- 
dom is justified of her children. If any 
man will do the will, he shall know the doc- 
trine. Is it not conceivable that these — as 
they seem to us — short-sighted and imprac- 
ticable directions, might, if they were tried, 
be found wise and far-sighted ? But I am 
not concerned now to demonstrate the wis- 
dom — as to earthly things — of Christ's com- 
mands. It is enough that they are His 
commands. Their wisdom may be — nay: 



40 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



certainly is — of another kind than ours. 
When we consider the flowers of the field, 
and His words, " Take no thought for your 
life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; 
nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on" 
do we not rise to a glimpse into a higher and 
wiser and happier state, in which human 
lives, no longer sordid and self-seeking, are 
apparelled in the beauty of lilies and the 
glory of kings ? Do we not, when we read 
these high commands, so heedless of the 
conditions actually prevailing here, even 
now catch swift views of another land in 
which we might be living, an earth of which 
St. Peter spoke in a phrase full at once of 
humour and indignation and sorrow and 
hope, " a new earth wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness " ? 

An earth so unlike this one that we can 
hardly believe in its possibility. It took a 
Christ to conceive it. An earth upon which 
when we made a dinner, we should invite 
the poor, the lame, and the blind, because 
they have nothing with which to recompense, 
refusing to bid our friends and rich neigh- 
bours, lest haply they also bid us in return ! 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 41 



An earth upon which men obeyed this law : 
" All things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, even so do ye also unto 
them." Do you observe the language ? Not 
" a little less than ye would have men do to 
you " ; and not " all things whatsoever ye 
have reason to expect men will do unto 
you." And the rule is universal in its ap- 
plication ; it has no limitations, no qualifi- 
cations ; it is peremptory. 

It seems therefore plain that Jesus Christ 
left those who would be His disciples an 
ethical code. To say this, is by no means 
to deny that His life and mission are infin- 
itely more than those of an ethical teacher. 
He is the Christ, God incarnate, the tem- 
poral manifestation of the Eternal Love, 
but, being so, He is no less a Teacher and 
a Master. Union with Him in thes acred 
mystery of His indwelling is not won through 
despising His physically uttered commands. 
If His words have a higher and more sacred 
meaning than that of mere directions for 
conduct, that cannot be contrary to the first 
plain and literal meaning. If faith in Christ 
is the great and alone sufficient requisite for 



42 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



salvation, that faith is not displayed in a 
lack of faith in His programme for the life 
of His followers. 

Is it not, I repeat, just lack of faith, infi- 
delity, disbelief, that leads us to explain away 
these words, adopting the easy evasion that 
they are the hyperbole of poetry, or the ex- 
ceeding enthusiasm of an idealist ? I wish I 
could believe it, but to my wish, my reason 
replies that the disciples did not discover this. 
They laboured under the delusion that Christ 
meant what He said, and they believed it all 
not a visionary, but a practical, thing. I 
read in St. Paul's letter to the Romans, — and 
I never heard that called poetry, — along with 
those sober exhortations to hospitality, to 
diligence in business, to honesty — the com- 
mands, to us so strange and unbusiness- 
like : Prefer ye one another. (Now prefer 
cannot mean enter into competition with, 
and undersell if possible.) Bless them that 
persecute you ; if thine enemy hunger, feed 
him; if he thirst, give him drink. More- 
over, as I read the story of the early dis- 
ciples, given in the Book of the Acts of the 
Blessed Apostles, I learn that the whole 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 43 



Church understood Christ literally in His 
words about treasures of earth, and accord- 
ingly its members resigned all that they had, 
" neither said any of them that aught of the 
things which he possessed was his own, but they 
had all things common" Notwithstanding 
this unbusinesslike policy, we have it on 
good authority that " great grace was upon 
them all y neither was there among them any 
that lacked" and that they were had in 
favour of all the people, and that their num- 
bers rapidly increased. Ah ! but those were 
unusual times. Truly were they unusual 
times ! But why may not these also be un- 
usual times ? — unusual and glorious ! Is it 
not still Christ's command: " Arise / let us 
go hence" out of an age of competition 
and selfishness into a better day of truly 
Christianized society founded on Love ! 

I am obliged to reply further that Jesus 
himself seemed to have mistaken this that 
we are asked to believe is poetry for down- 
right prose, and that He did not, on the 
whole, exhibit the symptoms of aberration. 
He seemed to have perfect confidence in the 
extraordinary method He recommended. 



44 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



He practised it, and with results of the most 
marvellous success. Anyone familiar with 
the barest outline of the life of Jesus knows 
that there is not a phase of self-renunciation, 
of heedlessness of material things, wealth, 
honour, ease, and pleasure, that He did not 
typify ; His whole life is so opposed to human 
maxims, His plans are so short-sighted, His 
methods so foolish, judged by our standards, 
that we are accustomed to say that His is 
a story which no novelist or legend-maker 
could or would have invented. Diplomacy 
was excluded from his methods. Force, 
pomp, political artifice, however honest— 
none of these things would He employ. 
With truth does Pascal say of the method He 
used in founding the Kingdom, " He took 
the way of perishing, according to human 
calculations/' A life lived in poverty in the 
most despised part of an insignificant pro- 
vince, — not in Athens or Rome, where He 
might have been appreciated ; spent in de- 
nouncing the nation's great men, whom He 
might have propitiated and employed for 
His ends; His companions a dozen fisher- 
men, peasants, a tax-collector and the like, 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



45 



— one of them a bandit, — and a handful of 
women ; His speeches occupied in telling 
men how hard it would be to follow Him; a 
life spent like that and ended on a cross, His 
friends fled, His very name apparently to be 
forgotten, as have been those of the thieves 
between whom He hung, — what a mistake, 
what a pitiable failure, how utterly vain and 
foolish ! 

Nay, rather, how divinely wise! The 
foolishness of God is wiser than men. Hath 
not God made foolish the wisdom of this 
world ? I invite you to turn over in your 
minds and hearts this reflection : If Christ, 
when in flesh upon earth, practised the rules 
of life which He recommended, would not 
we do well seriously to consider whether 
they are not also for our practice ? 

And if, conceding that Christ meant His 
words literally and not poetically, they still 
seem madness, I point not now, as later I 
shall, to the victories of the Cross, but I 
ask you to notice how in Christ's thought 
the extravagant and mad maxims which He 
uttered and lived by, are grounded in the 
very processes of the universe, in the very 



46 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



principles according to which GocTs govern- 
ment of the world is administered. Jesus 
says, Love your enemies, lend without ex- 
pectation of return, offer the cheek which 
has not been smitten, " in order that ye 
may be the sons of your Father who is in 
heaven. For He maketh His sun to rise 071 
the evil and the good, and sendeth rain upon 
the just and the unjust." Jesus is simply 
advising us to act on the plan on which 
God acts. If it is senseless for Him, then 
it is for us. To refuse the programme of 
Jesus is to repudiate the world-order, and 
flout the wisdom of God's rule, for it is just 
that that Christ recommends to us. Surely 
we would not have the divine plan of deal- 
ing with men changed, and surely we per- 
ceive that its folly is wisdom. Is there any- 
thing to compare with the victory of that 
Love which in singular fashions and in mys- 
terious providences worketh in the world, 
turning to its account the wrath of man, 
allowing, and yet always appropriating for 
its own ends, evil and human disobedience, 
and in spite of all hindrance and unwilling- 
ness, triumphantly realizing its aim ? In a 



THE CODE AND THE ISSUE. 



47 



triumph of divine Art (rsx^tj deov), the 
good God gives Himself, in His world, in 
His word, in His sacraments, in His Incar- 
nate Son, and gives His holy purposes for 
us, over into the hands of men; exposes 
Himself in all this to misunderstanding and 
contumely, and yet does it all in such a way 
that in its surrender, divine Love reveals its 
invincibility, its world-subduing omnipo- 
tence. 4 Christ invites us to participation 
in that divine programme. Is it such mad- 
ness ? 

I propose to you whether it is not possi- 
ble that Jesus had a definite conception of a 
redeemed human society, whether that con- 
ception may not be eminently sane, and all 
others short of it imperfect and irrational ; 
and whether we would not do well to study 
the principles which He announced, and the 
commands He gave, and to enter upon their 
obedience. 

Concluding the great address in which 
chiefly He gave the commands of which we 
have been talking, Jesus uttered a parable 
which it may be well especially for this time 
to lay seriously to heart. " The end of the 



48 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



century' 9 is a phrase whose unaccustomed 
accents the world is beginning again to hear. 
It is uttered everywhere with hope and dread 
by the earth's expectant peoples. Well will 
it be for the social institutions — all so sorely 
beset by the challenge of advancing Democ- 
racy — which, having heard these sayings, do 
them, for they shall be like wise men who 
built upon a rock, and over them the descend- 
ing floods and the beating winds shall not 
prevail. 



That it may please thee to give us an heart to 
love and fear thee, and diligently to live after 
thy commandments : 

We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord, 



III. 

THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 



Seven times in the course of the Sermon 
before the Cross, Jesus repeated the com- 
mandment of Love, and as may times more, 
solemnly, in the name of His own Love, 
enjoined obedience to His commandment. 
We , shall do well gravely to consider the 
meaning of that word " Love." 

One thing is certain to begin with : We 
shall altogether miss Jesus's meaning if we 
substitute for His word, the word " respect," 
say, or " tolerate." It is equally certain 
that we shall fail to apprehend Him if we 
read " love "as if it were synonymous with 
" like." I do not suggest the possibility of 
this confusion because it is one into which 
schoolgirls fall, but because I believe that 
while most of us, through verbal instinct, 
use the words with substantial accuracy, the 
distinction between them is not clear in our 
minds, and because I believe that that dis- 
tinction is an essential one. It is not, of 
course, a matter of degree; Love is more 



54 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



than a great liking. Neither is it true that 
loving is restricted to animate objects, while 
liking need not be — a common notion of 
the distinction. We may, we should, love 
our Country, love Truth and Beauty and 
Justice — all inanimate objects incapable of 
making response. The distinction, I feel 
sure, is this : In liking, we think of a thing 
as valuable to us; in loving, we think of 
ourselves as valuable to it. Liking is egois- 
tic ; Love is altruistic. We like for our own 
sake; we love for the other's sake. We like 
a thing when it gives us pleasure ; we love a 
thing when we desire to give to it pleasure 
or service or advantage ; when our self ceases 
to be the centre of thought, and becomes 
as nothing — becomes a thing to be freely 
offered, a casket to be broken and poured 
out upon the head of the object of our love. 
Love is sacrifice unconscious of itself; the 
complete giving, the absolute surrender. It 
is a streaming outward of the inmost treas- 
ures of the spirit, a consecration of its best 
activities to the welfare of another. 5 Love 
is a spendthrift, magnificent in its reckless- 
ness, squandering the very essence of the 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 55 



self upon its object, and by so doing en- 
riching the self beyond all measure. For in 
loving, the individual becomes reimperson- 
ated in another; indeed, becomes what in 
isolation he was not — a person. In giving, 
he gains, himself ; in losing, finds ; in 
spending, receives, himself. It is forever 
true that he alone comes into possession 
of himself who pours himself out in love; 
that whosoever shall seek to gain (7tepi7toi- 
tf&aadai) his life shall lose it, but whoso- 
ever shall lose his life shall bring it to a 
new birth (£>Gooyovrj6ai). He who giveth 
his life to a son shall receive it as a Father ; 
he who loseth his life in that of his country 
shall find his life as a Citizen ; he who layeth 
down his life in service for men shall take it 
up as a Man. For what is a Man but the 
sum of his sacrifices ? Here is a creature 
who will make none ; he says to himself : 
" I will decline all relationships. I won't 
take the trouble to be a Citizen. I won't 
be a Husband nor a Brother nor a Son. I 
refuse to be anyone's Friend. Let no man 
call me Employer or Partner. I will wrap 
myself in my own personality, and give 



S 6 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



nothing of myself to others." What has 
he done ? What is he ? He is nothing, and 
has not a name. He has not found, but 
lost, himself. For to be neither Father, 
Son, Husband, Friend, Neighbour, Em- 
ployer, nor Citizen, is to be — just nothing. 
You can give no description of such a 
being. He is not a Man, for manhood is 
attained just in the relationships, — the sac- 
rifices, — which he has declined. What we 
see upon the street is not a Man, but only 
the centre around which cluster the relation- 
ships which constitute the Man. Would 
you be a Man, in the fulness of its meaning ? 
Take up the relationships of life. Give 
yourself, and find yourself. Freely pour out 
your choicest possessions, and discover that 
returning tides bring richer ones. Enter into 
the fellowship of sacrifice. 

St. John is merely making a scientific 
statement when he says that he who loveth 
not his brother abideth in death. The sac- 
rifice of love thus is a blessing not alone for 
its object, but to him who sacrifices ; it makes 
sorrow itself, and deprivation and loss and 
shame, lyric with joy. In the camp of Israel 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 57 



and everywhere, it is when the burnt-offer- 
ing begins that the song of the Lord begins 
also with the trumpets. The chief joys of 
life are these two : to love, and to be loved. 
The first is best. To be the object of affec- 
tion may be gratifying, but that by itself 
offers nothing to compare with the deep and 
solemn joy of giving the soul in love, even 
unrequited and despised. He who said " It 
is more blessed to give than to receive 
knew that to the full even when His Sav- 
iours heart was breaking with rejected, but 
still infinite, love. Love is its own end and 
' its own reward, as it is its own motive and 
reason. Isn't God happy in sending His 
rain on the just and on the unjust, His sun 
to shine upon the evil and upon the good ? 
God doesn't do that because it is His pro- 
gramme, but because it is the natural and 
necessary expression of the law of His 
nature, which is Love. 

And so, to go now deeper into the sub- 
ject, it is not because it is a happiness to 
love that God commands it, but because 
Love, being the law of His nature, is there- 



5 8 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



fore the law by which order among men, by 
which human society, must stand. What- 
ever of social order there is among men to- 
day is the creation of the principle of Love. 
Society is organized sacrifice — imperfect as 
yet because there is as yet only the hesitat- 
ing sacrifice of imperfect Love. The basis 
of society is not in eternal vigilance, nor in 
an agreement to maintain certain laws, nor 
in mutual respect, nor mutual toleration, 
nor mutual trust sufficient to justify a net- 
work of contracts. The basis of society is 
in Love. What are the institutions of soci- 
ety, the orders which hold it together and 
give it form ? They are these three — the 
Family, the Nation, and the Church. These 
are all the creation of Love. Clubs, class 
associations, business partnerships, confed- 
eracies, religious societies of human origin 
— these things have their basis in contract, 
and they may be of temporary use, but 
there is for them no assurance of perpetuity. 
They do not belong in the scheme of the 
universe. They will have disappeared long 
ago, and have been forgotten, when the 
Nations and the Kindreds, in the city of the 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 59 



Church triumphant, stand everlastingly be- 
fore the throne, a perfect society. 

I say further, that Love is the only positive 
and creative force that works among men. 
Its effect is always life-begetting and organ- 
izing, Whether it be in its lowest and earli- 
est form, the yearning of brute for brute; 
or in that instinct, beginning already to 
exhibit the holiness of mother-love, which 
binds brute-parent to brute-offspring ; or 
in that gladdening and beautiful affection in 
which youth and maiden join hands for bet- 
ter or worse; or in the later deep tenderness 
of the family ties; or in the passionate devo- 
tion of the patriot to his country; or, finally, 
in the enthusiasm for humanity in which the 
true Churchman, the love-penetrated man, 
takes upon himself vicariously the sorrow of 
the world's sin, and sets about deeds of help- 
fulness and saving — everywhere, I say, Love 
is creative, constructive, making for order, a 
law of organization and salvation. 5 It makes 
no difference that it manifests itself in ignoble 
shapes, or that its highest forms are related 
to, or on some philosophy may be said to 
have their basis in, the physical instincts 



6o 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



implanted by natural laws cunningly work- 
ing for the propagation of life. Its origin, 
as Professor Maccunn remarks, 6 does not 
explain its end, and its initial motive but 
poorly suggests its final value. Even in its 
grossest forms sacrificial, Love has within 
itself the power of expansion and develop- 
ment 5 into the holiest of social forces, and 
in the process of this development it passes 
out of the stage where it has to be excited 
by the pleasing of the eye, into a pure 
passion of a soul for a soul ; and then out 
of that, ceasing to restrict itself according 
to the fancy, as the heart enlarges and 
beams upon the multitude of men and 
women, satisfied only to be lover of the 
world's soul, of the universal heart, and to 
spend itself in unreasoning sacrifice for 
even the mean, the ugly and the sinful of 
that family for which our Lord Jesus Christ 
was contented to be betrayed and to die. 

Ah ! how feebly and superficially we have 
used the word. How little we have under- 
stood its divine meaning! 

A few men have understood it ; One, per- 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 61 



fectly, because He knew it as the name of 
His Father, whose will — the will of Love — 
He had come into the world to do. Jesus 
gave us the perfect exposition of what Love 
is, and then He left it as what He called a 
New Commandment. But what was there 
new about it ? Love was an old thing. 
Certainly the newness was in the fulness, 
the unreservedness, in which exercised, 
Love was indeed become a new thing, and 
for the first time worthy of its name. We 
are to love in the measure in which He 
loved, and loves. And how is that ? Even 
with the uncalculating and supreme self-sur- 
render of His passion, Who on the cross 
prayed for His murderers, and of His own 
will giving up His life, refused to give up 
the Love with which He loved His own 
unto the end. 

Was He in earnest ? Who can doubt it 
as he contemplates the tragedy of Calvary ! 
And was He any less in earnest in desiring 
us to love than He was in loving ? Is our 
Palm Sunday Collect using vain words when 
it declares that He took upon Him our flesh 
and suffered death upon the cross in order 



62 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



that all mankind might follow His example ? 
Is it not true that the purpose and end of 
His sacrifice is to inspire us to sacrifice ? — 
that He fails unless He does so inspire us ? 
— that the salvation which His blood accom- 
plishes is just this and nothing else: the 
salvation of men from the isolation and 
chaos of selfishness to membership in a King- 
dom of Love? He wrought, not some mys- 
terious transaction in heavenly assizes, but 
a definite work among men, which, widening 
and increasing, is indeed more and more 
their salvation. His life did not aim at 
arousing in future generations tender and 
sentimental emotions; it aimed at making 
plain for concrete application the principle 
which is intended to rule in men's relations 
with one another. His utterances concern- 
ing Love are not rhapsodies, but scientific 
formulations of eternal social truths. Those 
specific directions for conduct which we were 
thinking of last week, largely seen, all inter- 
pret themselves as parts of the Law of Love, 
of which His career was the expression. It 
may be called the Law of the Integration of 
Mankind. To its obedience we are called 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 63 



by the revelation of humanity's inevitable 
unity in interests and fate, which modern 
studies in unprecedented degree have made. 
The physical sciences, medicine, mental 
and psychological researches, combine in 
their results to impress us with the truth 
that in cause and destiny men are one. 
I am bound to you, you to one another 
and to me, not in a kinship, rather in 
a vital partnership, solemn and terrible in 
its responsibilities, its burden and its inspi- 
ration. The fate of the race is mine. Its 
sins I must bear in my own flesh ; mine are 
wounds in its body. Is it not true that 
Christ's supreme effort was to persuade us 
of this ? 

It is true, and I venture to believe that 
days very close at hand are to acknowledge 
and act upon its truth to a degree unparal- 
leled except in its acknowledgment and 
obedience by the primitive Church. It is 
not true — it is not true — that this is an age 
more cruel and selfish than past ones have 
been. Nice words indeed fail adequately to 
characterize its enormities of injustice, its 
deep-seated viciousness and cruelty. But 



6 4 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



when we who see these things feel upon us 
the commission to cry out against them, let 
us not forget that it is something that we 
see them, that it is much that we think it 
worth while to cry out. The age continues 
in its wrongs, but it is conscience stricken. 
Never was there such sensitiveness to the 
sight of suffering. Never was there such 
interest in the searching out of class wrongs, 
and in the improvement of labor and living 
conditions; never such certainty of sympa- 
thetic reception for appeals for justice. Mr. 
Kidd, who, in Chapter VII. of his book, 
gathers the evidence on this point, furnishes 
most convincing testimony of the steady, 
unperceived triumph through the centuries 
of the Gospel as a social power. The King- 
dom of Heaven is as if a man should cast 
seed upon the earth ; and should sleep and 
rise night and day, and the seed should 
spring up and grow, he knoweth not how. 
The social conditions under which the fathers 
of this generation lived are well-nigh incon- 
ceivable to us. But there is no stopping 
now. The institutions of society as it is 
now organized which do not commend them- 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 



65 



selves to the altruistic judgment are con- 
demned already. 7 All heart has been taken 
out of the defence of them ; their defenders 
have no faith in their own cause. The con- 
viction, the confidence, and the courage to- 
day are all in possession of those who lead 
the demand for realized brotherhood, the 
abolition of the competitive system, and the 
socialization of work. 

I am in line, therefore, with the great 
movement which is the most imposing fea- 
ture of modern civilization, — a movement 
whose significance we have hardly yet be- 
gun to measure, nor whose end to guess, — 
when I plead for a distinct recognition and 
obedience of Christ's commandment of 
Love; and I am preaching an enterprise 
upon which the world, without naming it, 
or stopping to inquire into its own motive, 
has already entered. Surely it is desirable 
that the world should know that its motive, 
and the law of its social evolution and salva- 
tion, is just that Love which Christ exempli- 
fied and enjoined. Surely it is desirable 
that the social revolution which it is the un- 
mistakable mood of the age to proceed 

5 



66 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



with, should be saved from blunder and vio- 
lence by the proclamation that it must be 
nothing else than the application of the 
law of Love to yet wider tracts of the life 
of man. Surely it is desirable that human 
society should be persuaded that there is 
none other name under heaven given among 
men whereby it may be saved but only the 
name of Jesus Christ. 

And, therefore, I cannot conceive any 
duty more imperatively laid upon the Church 
to-day than that of claiming, taking posses- 
sion of, and guiding this revolution. And 
when we begin to meditate upon that duty, 
is not the question inevitably forced upon 
us, How shall we induce the world to accept 
the law of Christ, unless we ourselves first 
fully submit to it? And when we talk of the 
Church lifting and saving society, does not 
sometimes intrude itself the recollection of 
that troublesome and inconsiderate retort 
made to the complacent Pope ? — " The 
successors of St. Peter cannot say, ' Sil- 
ver and gold have I none/ " " Aye, 
neither can they say, ' Rise up and walk! 1 " 
— the retort which we try to think inconse- 



THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 67 



quential, but which we yet fear has a certain 
logic. Is it, then, unlikely that we may 
have, with searchings of heart, soon to en- 
tertain the conclusion advocated alike by 
Kingsley and Maurice, together with many 
adherents of the Catholic restoration — the 
conclusion to which the Oxford movement 
looked, and with whose proclamation from 
the Church's pulpits London this very Lent 
is ringing — that there is a sane and rational 
Christian Socialism, which must be — not 
made a subject for agitation ; not presented 
as a theory for the world's adoption; — but 
quietly and increscently embraced by the 
followers of the Carpenter of Nazareth, who 
bade His disciples forsake houses and lands 
for His sake, — if the Kingdom of Heaven 
is to triumph on earth ? 

I am submitting these questions to you. 
I feel their seriousness and my own inex- 
perience too keenly to presume to answer 
them. Certainly the word which I have 
just used, " Socialism," connotes in the 
popular mind much that no Churchman, 
that no right-thinking man, can possibly 
look upon with favour. Is there not, there- 



68 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



fore, all the more reason to claim it for a 
better, for a Christian, use, and to insist 
that, if — as it seems — it is to be the watch- 
word of social progress, it shall mean no 
more, but also that it shall mean no less, 
than a New Obedience to the New Com- 
mandment to Love one another ? 



Merciful Lord, the Teacher of thy faithful 
people ; Increase in thy Church the desires which 
thou hast given, and confirm the hearts of those 
who hope in thee, by enabling them to understand 
the measure of thy promises ; that all thy children 
may even now with faith behold, and with pa- 
tience await, the consummation which as yet thou 
dost not plainly manifest ; through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 8 

Amen. 



IV. 

THE COMING KINGDOM, 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 



The leading illustrated weekly magazine 
of this country keeps standing in display 
type under its name, the words: " A Jour- 
nal of Civilization/' This journal main- 
tains an ably conducted department called 
" This Busy World/' in which are presented 
week by week interesting items relating to 
culture and progress. The number which 
lay upon my desk when I sat down to make 
the notes for this address, contained, among 
others, this note of civilization : 

" An outrage which from time to time calls 
forth fruitless wails of indignation from the 
populace of San Francisco was again brought 
to public notice a few days ago. This is the 
throwing in {sic) the bay of thousands upon 
thousands of fresh herring in order to keep 
up the market price. This barbarous custom 
of dumping tons of fresh fish in the bay 
rather than allow the price to drop the frac- 
tion of a cent has been vainly attacked by 
the Harbor Commission. The fishermen 
have circumvented them by throwing their 



74 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



cargoes over in the middle of the bay, where 
the State Board cannot reach them. The 
waste is particularly aggravating when one 
considers the possibility of distributing or 
selling such fish at low prices to the poor." 9 

It is only one of many glimpses which 
any journal will give into the state of society 
in which we live. I select it because its 
scene is far away, and because, therefore, 
no interest of anyone here is engaged in it, 
and no one's resentment can be aroused by 
its recitation. But is it necessary to say 
that it is not an incident which is in the least 
out of line with the customary conduct of 
production and consumption as it goes on 
to-day ? Doesn't everyone know that a vast 
amount of food daily goes to waste, while 
thousands of people habitually go hungry ? 
Doesn't everyone know that the vast sys- 
tem by which things now are produced, pre- 
pared for use, distributed and redistributed 
for sale, and finally retailed, puts a fictitious 
value upon every article of food, clothing, 
comfort and luxury, and makes it necessary 
to maintain that value? — that it adds to the 
cost of every purchase, by rich and poor, 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 75 



the cost of wasted labor, and all the un- 
necessary expenditure for advertising, — a 
species of warfare, — and the making attrac- 
tive of rival establishments ? I am not, 
nor during these addresses shall I be, de- 
nouncing those who prosper under this sys- 
tem. I am only pointing out certain facts 
which are connected with it. Among other 
such facts are these : 

The necessaries for satisfactory human 
life, in the lowest estimate, are:- — pure air, 
pure water, pure food and a sufficient 
amount of it, a certain amount of clothing, 
protection from the weather, fuel for cook- 
ing and heating, possibilities of cleanliness, 
of adequate rest, and of decent privacy. 10 
Is it any secret that a considerable por- 
tion of humanity does not have these 
things ? 

To lift human life above the level of brute 
existence, to the above-mentioned necessi- 
ties must be added : — opportunity for ac- 
quiring knowledge, for at least a little 
acquaintance with history, science, possibly 
with literature, philosophy, and art ; oppor- 
tunity to read books, see pictures, hear 



7 6 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



music, witness the drama; opportunity for 
decent sober intercourse with others, occa- 
sional recreation in joyful gatherings, in the 
noble sports, possibly in travel. It is per- 
fectly well known that more than half the 
race does not have these opportunities. 

This is in the large, and, like all such 
statements, touches nobody with its pathos. 
It is when one goes out among these 
" masses," as we call them, and sees with 
his own eyes particular instances of abject 
want and unspeakable misery, that it begins 
to come home to him like the hurt of a stab 
or blow, that this should be. When for a 
little while he has gone into and out of tene- 
ments where light and pure air and cleanli- 
ness are luxuries for which their swarming 
tenants can never hope ; when he has seen a 
thousand men, women, and children living 
— if the word will bear such a use — in one 
narrow court, under conditions in which it 
would be a scandal to kennel animals ; when 
he learns the current wages of shirt-makers 
and shop-girls, and understands that they 
are not everywhere expected to live upon 
their pay; when he has seen a woman or 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 77 



two — rarely a man ; he can steal more easily ; 
— dead from insufficient food; and when he 
sees, more pathetic than all this, the sad 
failure, the wretched futility, of charity 
against such odds, — he will perhaps wonder 
when it was that Christianity began to civil- 
ize the world, and how the world ever got 
along without it. 

A few years ago it was a current question, 
seldom proposed, I believe, but with good 
results in awakened public conscience, 
" What would Christ do, if He came to this 
city?" The answer, dictated by the tem- 
per of the men who gave it, was generally a 
story of universal denunciation. There is 
enough that deserves denunciation. Never- 
theless my own feeling is that if, to speak 
foolishly, Christ came to Boston, He would 
not walk our streets without seeing much to 
rejoice in. He would see not a few evi- 
dences that the city had begun to follow 
Him, though as yet a great way off, evi- 
dences of civic Christianity, of corporate 
discipleship. He would recognize as such 
the public schools, the city's confession of 



78 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



her duty in the education of her children. 
He would, however, very likely enquire how 
it was that, if we admitted the duty of be- 
ginning the education of every child, we did 
not also recognize the duty of doing away 
with conditions which make the later life of 
half the children such that there is no pos- 
sibility of carrying that education on ; such 
that their little glimpse into the world of 
light and beauty remains only a tantalizing 
remembrance, a sting, a breeder of disaffec- 
tion and envy. He would commend us for 
the pictures and bits of statuary in the 
school-rooms, but He might ask us why, if 
this be a civic function, it is not also one to 
tear down the miserable rookeries in which 
many of these children live, and to demand 
the erection of respectable human habita- 
tions in their stead ; why, if it is a munici- 
pal duty to teach the people to sing, it is 
not also one to give them reason to sing. 

He would rejoice, — I know not in what else 
so much, — in that fair white temple of learn- 
ing yonder, the Public Library, the chaste 
beauty of whose walls is the chief adorn- 
ment of the city, and whose freely-poured 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 



79 



out treasures above all else furnish and 
decorate the life of the city's people, and in 
the fine freedom of that square in which it 
stands, claimed by the city for the public 
good, and with its surrounding public build- 
ings witnessing to the fact that we do live, 
and are beginning to recognize that we live, 
a corporate life. He might wonder why 
side by side there, there need be three 
places of worship for those for whom His 
most solemn prayer was that they might be 
one, and why those edifices, specifically de- 
nominated " Christian," and professing to 
be the special exponents of the Fatherhood 
of God and the Brotherhood of Man, are 
not, like those secular and non-religious 
affairs, the Art Museum and the Library, 
"Open Free to All." Christ was always 
unable to appreciate the practical difficulties 
that are to be met with in the world, and 
He might still be, as He showed Himself in 
Judea, quite unreasonable in declining to 
take account of the prevailing state of 
things. It is even to be feared He would 
be incapable of understanding why, if a 
Copley Square is good for the Back Bay, the 



8o 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



North End should have only a Copp's Hill 
Burying Ground. 

His attitude, to speak directly, would, I 
apprehend, be one of commendation for all 
the beautiful and glad things which our rec- 
ognition of our community, our vital part- 
nership, has brought into being, and of 
insistence that that recognition of commun- 
ity should go on to its conclusion, — in the 
effacement of unsightly spots from the city's 
domain, the widening of streets, the provi- 
sion of parks, the diffusion of knowledge, 
the setting up everywhere of creations of 
art, so that human spirits, wherever born 
into the world, might open their eyes upon 
something of that loveliness with which 
God has filled it; and, that all this might be, 
insistence that the people itself should as- 
sume the administration of — I will not under- 
take to say what — other public matters, as it 
already has of education and the postal 
service. 

I decline at this point to discuss the prac- 
ticability of this. I am content, not even 
pointing out to what extent Birmingham 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 8l 



and Glasgow have found it practicable, to 
say that Christians are not bound by con- 
siderations of practicability. We profess 
to have embraced an ideal, and that ideal 
demands that we increasingly conform to it, 
not only in our individual lives, but also in 
our social life. That ideal, I do not hesitate 
to express my conviction, is intolerant of 
the cut-throat scramble which we apotheo- 
size as " the refining process of competi- 
tion it knows nothing of that "deep 
ethical purpose " which the prevailing social 
economy hears " rolling, like solemn music, 
through all the strain and stress of the 
struggle for existence/ ' As it is set forth 
in the unworldly words of Jesus which on 
other Friday noons we have considered, you 
will agree, it does not contemplate rivalry, 
competition anywhere, but everywhere love, 
the preferring of others to ourselves, the 
seeking of opportunities, not for success, 
but for self-sacrifice. It knows of struggle 
and stress, but of a different sort; not of 
men against men, but of men as a race, their 
cause one, their destiny one, fighting to- 
gether the wars of humanity, but ministering 
6 



32 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



to each other, helpfully and tenderly, along 
the marches and on every stricken field. 
This may not be practicable ; it may not be 
good social economy, but as sure as God 
lives, it is Christianity ! It is what the foot- 
sore, sighing Christ, as He walks to-day 
through the joyless alleys where men stifle, 
where women bear deformities for children, 
— this is what He looks for, and prays the 
Father to hasten ; this is what, in the slow 
process of the centuries, He is bringing 
about. If we don't want it to be brought 
about, we ought in honesty to abjure Him 
and His teachings, and like the Gadarenes, 
beseech Him to depart out of our coasts. 
If we don't think a society built on the 
principles announced by Christ desirable or 
feasible, very well. Only let us remember 
that we have no right to reject Christ as a 
Master, Guide and Teacher, nay: as what 
He claims to be, a King, — and yet keep 
Him as the object of what we are pleased to 
call our devotions. 

That we may not do. Neither have we 
any right to talk of the Kingdom of Heaven 
as a far-off aesthetic fancy, or as a goodly 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 



3.3 



place in another world into which saints and 
children too fragile for earth are gathered, 
when Christ talked of it as a social order 
which it was His mission to establish on 
earth. 

Jesus Christ was not the originator of a 
doctrine. He was not the author of a plan for 
the salvation of souls out of the world. He 
was not a personage of beautiful character 
who may become to pious individuals the 
object of a tender sentiment. Jesus Christ 
is a King. He did not compose a volume 
of valuable morality; He wrote never a line, 
save one in the sand. He founded a King- 
dom. He began His career with a formal 
statement concerning the nature of that 
Kingdom. He told many parables begin- 
ning " The Kingdom of Heaven is like 
unto" this and that. He taught His dis- 
ciples, and us, to pray for the coming of 
the Kingdom. He was tried for claiming 
to be a King. He affirmed before His judges 
that such He was. The inscription on His 
cross proclaimed Him a King, and the cross 
itself is the eternal symbol of the Law of 
Love, the Law of Sacrifice, which He, hav- 



8 4 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



ing perfectly fulfilled, commends to us as 
the rule of His Kingdom. 11 

Christianity is not an individual matter. 
Jesus was not primarily a teacher of indi- 
vidual morality, neither did He know any- 
thing of individual salvation. He was a 
Revealer of Social Ethics. His commands 
are not maxims of individual conduct; 
they are statements of great social truths. 
He did not spend His time telling men 
how they might save each his soul. He 
carried in His heart the vision of a re- 
deemed and saved society, a universal Chris- 
tian State, and every word He uttered, and 
every act He did, was in an effort to have 
that State, that Kingdom, realized in fact 
upon earth. 

We cannot doubt that since He laid its 
foundation, the Kingdom has been slowly 
rising into view. But we cannot affirm that 
we have yet seen it in anything like its com- 
pletion, nor that we have as yet any but the 
faintest notion of what it will be. We call 
our civilization " Christian " only in virtue 
of the promise which it gives of passing into 
the as yet almost undiscovered thing — Chris- 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 



85 



tianity. Very little right have we to call 
ourselves by His name, we who still maintain 
a thousand institutions and practices directly 
opposed to His plain commands. 

The race of men has yet to realize its kin- 
ship, its indestructible unity. Yet surely we 
can perceive the slow birth of a new percep- 
tion of this. A race consciousness, a social 
mind, a common human spirit, is it not 
awakening to know, and to wonder at, itself? 
Are we not learning to see ourselves in each 
other, and to see ourselves in a larger life 
and consciousness of which we are parts ? 
learning, each of us, that in our own inter- 
est, we cannot be indifferent to the fortunes 
of any brother-man ? that each of us must, 
in a measure, bear in our own flesh the sor- 
row of the world ? that, as the Bishop of 
Durham exclaimed, 12 it is our own cause 
which is at stake there in the haunts of sin 
and misery, there also in the abodes of 
thoughtless luxury ? that upon us everyone 
is the burden of the essential, unescapable 
brotherhood, with its solemn responsibilities, 
and its yet magnificent inspiration ? 

And can we doubt that as this sense of 



86 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



our unity grows in us, the Kingdom will 
come ? What will it be when it has come ? 
Probably it will never have come ; it will be 
forever coming. But in its coming, it will 
do these things : 

It will take command of the energy now 
spent in the effort — on the part of many, 
ineffectual — to gain the mere means of sub- 
sistence, and it will direct it to fruitful ends, 
freeing all men during the larger part of each 
day, for profitable recreation, reading, and 
public service. 

It will relieve those who are now obliged 
to accept disproportionate rewards for their 
services, the rich, from that necessity, and 
set them free from the thankless and worry- 
ing task of administering wealth, giving them 
opportunity for happier and truer living. 

It will abolish sweating, slums and idle- 
ness. It will stimulate invention, and en- 
courage honest work in crafts and arts. 

It will level, — level up, to the best of us, 
— the classes; " exploited " and " exploit- 
ers " will become words of forgotten mean- 
ing. It will bring it about that no man to 
whom God has given capacity for knowledge 



THE COMING KINGDOM. 87 



need die ignorant, and that under the fair 
sky, on the earth of the smiling fields and 
the laughing waters, no man nor woman 
need beg, sell honour for bread, die or live in 
shame, wretchedness, or sorrow, unloved. 

A dream ! A Utopia ! An enthusiastic 
vision ! Yes. But Christ's dream. 

To-day we have talked of the Kingdom of 
redeemed humanity, of the perfected social 
state, as an ideal, one toward which society 
is, possibly very slowly, working. There 
has been nothing in these reflections to alarm 
us; nothing to more than pleasantly interest 
us. The consummation of the Kingdom is 
in the centuries far ahead. We are willing 
devoutly to pray for it, from afar, and mean- 
while we find living in the existing state of 
things, very pleasant. 

There remains the question whether we 
living men and women have any duty in ref- 
erence to the coming Kingdom beyond that 
of praying for it. It remains for us to ask 
ourselves whether any among us are called 
to lives so ordered that they will hasten the 
day when the ideal shall step forth into the 
daylight of reality. 



Thy kingdom come. 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



One day Jesus, " being asked by the Phari- 
sees, 1 When cometh the Kingdom of Godf 
answered them and said, * The Kingdom of 
God cometh not with observation ; neither 
shall they say, Lo here ! or There ! For lo / 
the Kingdom of God is in your midst. 9 1 9 13 

We have talked of it on these Friday 
noons, as the Pharisees thought of it, as if 
its coming were a far-off event, which, when 
it transpires, will revolutionize society, and 
make demands upon the consciences of men 
then living such as will sensibly modify the 
conduct of their lives. We feel it to be a 
duty to desire its coming; we cheerfully 
offer our prayer for it. Some of us, in seri- 
ous moments, grow earnest in wishing for 
it; impressed by the shortcomings of the 
prevailing order, seeing the chance and in- 
justice and cruel indifference to suffering 
which mark it, there are few of us who do 
not, in our better moods, long for the con- 
summation of the Kingdom. There is 



94 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



abroad a widespread, if on the part of some 
a gentle and unaggressive, hope for a com- 
ing better day, and a pretty general feeling 
that quietly, gradually, the old order chang- 
ing, is giving place to the new, In the 
meantime, pleased and contented by the 
vision of the Earthly Paradise, 

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, 
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight ? 

Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme 
Beats with light wings against the ivory gate, 

Telling a tale not too importunate 

To those who in the sleepy region stay, 

Lulled by the singer of an empty day. 

So we find comfort in assuming that the 
commands of Christ are intended to come 
into effect only when the Kingdom of 
Heaven has fully come. Then most cer- 
tainly we shall be prepared to turn the other 
cheek, lend to every borrower, offer the 
coat to him who robs us of the cloak. In 
this present world, we do assure you, we 
shall do nothing so absurd. Those are mil- 
lennial precepts. They are lofty and beauti- 
ful, but their impracticability at present is 
so manifest that we are absolved from the 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



95 



duty of their obedience. We hope and 
pray the day will come when we may obey 
them, but — Christ never intended His people 
to starve. Were some of us disposed to 
accept them as intended for immediate prac- 
tice, to renounce the accumulation of money, 
withdraw from competition, refuse to accept 
incomes from the labour of others, or to take 
advantage of rises in land-values brought 
about by movements of others — were we to 
consider such a course, our duty to our fami- 
lies and those dependent on us would pre- 
vent our entering upon it. The literal 
obedience of Chrises words is a conceivable 
duty under other circumstances ; under exist- 
ing ones it would be a palpable absurdity. 

This is an objection much better founded 
than the cheap evasion which we considered 
two weeks ago, based on the assumption 
that Jesus was an enthusiast and a poet 
whose extravagances of speech can under 
no circumstances be entitled to regard. We 
are face to face to-day with the position 
which admits the authority of Christ's com- 
mands, but holds that they are intended to 
apply to those only who will be members of 



9 6 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



perfected society, while we, who have our 
parts still in a society incomplete and im- 
perfect, are, on account of practical consid- 
erations and practical duties therefrom aris- 
ing, released from the obligation of present 
obedience. 

Against this objection also, I am con- 
strained nevertheless to maintain the author- 
ity of Jesus's words as directions for conduct 
to-day. 

In the first place, I challenge the assump- 
tion that the ethical standard of Christ — 
that the commercial morality, say, of the 
Sermon on the Mount — is impracticable. 
What right have we to conclude that a man 
who, submitting to Christ's code, gives to 
every one that asks and turns not away from 
the borrower, — what right have we to assert 
that he will not succeed in business ? May- 
be not, but let the rule be tried before it is 
condemned. It happens that I know of 
one man who practises this rule. A few 
years ago, he had not a dollar of his own ; 
to-day he says not a dollar he has is his 
own ; he calls it God's, and holds it as God's 
trustee, but he has thousands, this poor 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



97 



credulous disciple of the visionary Jesus, 
which keep him busy in the effort to spend 
them for the brightening of other human 
lives. I ask you if it is not at least possible 
that Love would prove as good a business 
principle as Competition ; if it is not pos- 
sible that such a command as " Bear ye one 
another s burdens " has import of advantage 
to banks, business houses, to nations ; pos- 
sible that neglect of such an injunction — laid 
upon peoples and government treasuries as 
well as upon individuals — as " Lay not up 
for yourselves treasures upon earth 9 ' is cer- 
tain to result in industrial and commercial 
distress ? I have no doubt the Apostles 
gravely doubted the wisdom or practicabil- 
ity of Jesus's plan when He sent them out 
without provision or resources, but when 
they returned and He asked them, " When 
I sent you forth without purse and wallet and 
shoes, lacked ye anything?" they answered 
" Nothing" 

But it is not, it can never be, on this 
ground that the directions of Christ are to 
be followed. It is, I take it, quite a matter 
of indifference whether they minister to 

7 



98 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



worldly success or not. No man is worthy 
of the glorious company of the disciples of 
the Way, of the goodly fellowship of the 
Kingdom of Heaven, unless the casting up 
of profit and loss accounts has lost all in- 
terest to him. Christian discipleship is 
nothing, or it is complete and heroic disre- 
gard of all earthly prosperity. If the alter- 
native be between disobeying Christ and 
starving, he only can with right claim the 
name of disciple who counts it joy to starve. 
The only question can be as to what really 
is the Master's intention and desire. We 
must, then, come to close quarters with that 
question. 

Doing so, we shall find it difficult to dis- 
cover any basis for allowing ourselves to 
think that Jesus's Kingdom, with its extra- 
ordinary laws, is something which is to come 
into effect by and by. It was heralded by 
the cry, " The Kingdom of Heaven is at 
hand ! y> And when He came, Jesus did not 
preach it as a state of things which would 
one day come to pass, meanwhile Himself 
living comfortably in this present world ; He 
proclaimed it as an existing fact. The work 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



99 



of the Apostles was to preach, saying, " The 
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Men 
were to enter and take their places in it. 
He was a King, and His followers were to 
wear His yoke, and obey His voice. It was 
a fellowship of those who despised the 
show, the fashion of things, who were " of 
the truth." If He taught them to pray for 
the coming of the Kingdom, so did He to 
pray for daily bread, and if one petition was 
to be daily answered, so was the other. 
The continual prayer was to receive a con- 
tinual answer. It was a fellowship of men 
who were in the world, and yet were not of 
the world. It was as the hidden leaven, 
whose unregarded working was to transform 
that in which it was concealed. It was a 
Kingdom which was to come without obser- 
vation; the disciples could not point it out 
" Lo! here, or there! " and yet it was even 
then in their midst. 

In point of fact, the one gigantic feature 
which distinguishes the Kingdom from all 
humanly conceived Utopias is just this: 
They are in the future; they are to be 
brought about. It is. Plato and More and 



ioo THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



the modern builders of Altrurias dream of 
things that confessedly are in the future. 
Jesus taught that His Kingdom was at hand, 
in the very midst already. He Himself fully 
accepted its laws. He knew no others. Of 
the customs, usages, fashions of His time, 
He took no account. To Him any other 
social order than that of His Kingdom of 
Love was inconceivable. It is true that He 
found His plan impracticable as a method 
for immediate material success. He was 
ground under the heels of the society with 
which He would make no compromise. He 
did not, on that account, modify in the least 
His conduct. He simply would not reckon 
with prevailing conditions and what we 
account practical considerations. He lived 
in an ideal world. He lived in it as easily, 
as serenely, as if it were the world in which 
all other men were likewise living, as if He 
did not know that so living, His end was cer- 
tain to be the cross. 

In the light of His own life, His com- 
mands, so oblivious of the existing order, 
and yet uttered with such divine calmness, 
appear unmistakably to lay upon us the ob- 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



IOI 



ligation of assuming the attitude which was 
His toward the world into which the provi- 
dence of birth brings us, and toward the 
Eternal Kingdom. Christ does not contem- 
plate a discipleship which asks whether His 
directions are possible, as things are. His 
servants are not to know how things are; 
they are to know only how they ought to 
be. They never hear Him in a single syl- 
lable recognize the necessity of getting on in 
the world, of maintaining one's dignity and 
position, of retaliating when wronged, even 
of providing for bodily wants. There are 
no such necessities ; we are not to know of 
any. In the Kingdom of which we are 
members, self-humiliation, meekness, love, 
boundless in flow and infinite in capacity for 
sacrifice, thoughtlessness of to-morrow, are 
the necessities. We are to live as if the 
world were the Kingdom of Heaven. It 
alone is absolute, and its laws, and nothing 
short of them, are to determine our conduct. 
We have nothing to do with any other state 
of society; we cannot modify any particular 
of our lives out of respect for it. It may 
crush us; our duty remains unchanged. 



102 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



Such, it grows plainer to me, was Jesus's 
deliberately determined programme for Him- 
self and His disciples. Any other reading 
makes the Gospels a mass of inconsistency 
and His life the blankest nonsense. 

If it is said that this is a standard of life 
inconceivably high, I reply that the counsels 
of God are indeed that high. It is, how- 
ever, the standard of the Prayer Book. To 
refer to no more than a single illustration : 
in the Collect for the Ascension Day, we are 
taught to pra)^ that we may in heart and 
mind ascend into heaven and there contin- 
ually dwell. This is nothing less than a prayer 
for aid in fulfilling what I am concluding 
was the injunction of Christ : to forget and 
ignore this current world, and put our lives 
into the ordering of minds and hearts which 
dwell already in a consummated Kingdom 
of Love. 

There is no time left in which to do more 
than suggest the concrete results to which 
such a submission to Christ and His King- 
dom, on the part of living men and women, 
looks. That it would profoundly modify 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



J 03 



the life of Christians, and make them indeed 
a peculiar people, is too plain to need say- 
ing. Obedience to the laws of a Kingdom, 
existing unseen in a world which meantime 
conducts its affairs on directly contrary 
laws, would require a thorough revision of 
most of the habits of our lives. It would 
require the giving up of much which some 
of us now prize, and the learning to enjoy 
things for which now we care little. It 
would simplify life on its material side, to 
enrich it, we may be sure, on its spiritual 
side. It would demand of us the wrenching 
of our affections from the luxuries and 
pleasures upon which now they are centred, 
that they might surely there be fixed, where 
true joys are to be found. It would leave 
us the noble delights of music and the con- 
templation of the beautiful; it would set us 
free to learn the glory of earth and sky and 
sea, the luxury of a peaceful conscience, 
the pleasure of simplicity, the deep joy of 
sacrifice. But it would have the most seri- 
ous requisitions. 

In particular and at once, it would require 
a new scrutiny of titles to possessions and 



104 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



of sources of incomes. Christianity does 
not, it seems to me, impeach the title to 
property. This I will not argue, for the rea- 
son that it is a conclusion congenial to the 
common sentiment, and few require to be 
persuaded of it. But that it changes, that it 
entirely changes, the character of such title, 
transforming it into an ownership in trust, 
must be insisted upon with importunate 
earnestness. Submission to Christ would 
require us to recognize, and to act upon the 
recognition of, the mutual indebtedness of 
all men to each other, to confess that no 
man has the slightest right to a single posses- 
sion, to be held for his own sake, or other- 
wise than in trust for his brothers. 

I cannot pass this point without speaking 
to it directly and definitely. 

Permit me, so that I may not appear to 
assail any class or individual, to use myself 
in illustration of what I mean. 

I have sometimes written stories which 
the magazines buy and presumably find a 
good investment. Who really composed 
those stories ? Not I, I am free to say, to 
whom the checks in payment were made. 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



105 



How could I have told the story of a ship- 
wreck, but for the loss of the Jason that 
fearful night on the sands of Pamet, and the 
heroism of the Truro surfmen ? How could 
I have conceived of a noble criminal, but 
for the boy in the condemned cell at Chicago 
whose last thought was to save his mother 
from disgrace ? The tales were not mine, 
nor can any tale be its " author's " ; they 
are the soldiers', the unfortunates', the 
heroes', the men's and women's who live. 
And, besides, who taught me to write ? 
Who, with unrelenting scrutiny, trained my 
pen to do its work correctly and with direct- 
ness ? Who imparted to me the artistic 
sense of arrangement ? Where did I get 
any quality of sympathy that may inform 
my style ? What models have I had ? After 
paying all these debts, have I anything to 
keep ? 

I have sometimes made and published 
studies of social and religious conditions 
exhibited in New England towns and cities. 
What right have I to make money out of 
the fact that certain mill tenements are ruin- 
ous and unfit for habitation, or that an unfor- 



io6 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



tunate community is interesting in the divi- 
sion of its religious life ? I may pretend to 
answer, I have a right to do so because the 
community is not interesting till I have 
brought to bear upon it my superior keen- 
ness of observation and power of analysis ; 
the tenements and their people might have 
rotted unheard of but for my personal cour- 
age in denouncing their owners' inhumanity. 
The chances are I have neither any particu- 
lar power of thought nor degree of courage, 
but only an unusual opportunity (being 
free, by good fortune, from the necessity of 
unremitting toil) to look about for interest- 
ing subjects; or possibly, by acquaintance 
or connection, access to the reviews, which 
others do not possess. In other words, 
social conditions have unjustly favoured me, 
and upon this favour I am able to lay a tax. 

Or if, for supposition's sake, I have intel- 
lectual power or a measure of personal fear- 
lessness, whence came it ? Did I come by 
it in any way which makes it mine without 
a debt ? What of the great and noble souls 
(they rise before my memory; some are 
dead ; some live and are unknown ; some the 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



107 



world honours ;) from whom I have absorbed 
all that I can possibly claim of any good ? 

These addresses may be published. Sup- 
pose they were to sell well. Have I any 
right to the proceeds which the publishers 
turn over to me ? Why is not recompense 
made my teachers ? (always, on any concep- 
tion of society, miserably underpaid ;) — the 
nurse of my infancy ? How much ought to 
go to those the knowledge of whose wrongs 
directly inspired me to choose this line for 
these Lenten sermons ? — to the maimed pen- 
cil peddler the other day driven off Tremont 
Street here back into the region where his 
kind is permitted to exist; to that poor 
child in the night at Venice, whose hand 
with pathetic gesture crept so pitiably a mo- 
ment from under her shawl, whose face was 
so timid and pinched, marked half with hope 
for a few centimes, half with dread of a 
curse, in the night filled with music and 
moonbeams and laughter — and sorrow? 
How much ought to go to the obscure to- 
bacconist in Smithfield who sold me the 
copy of Merrie England^ from which I am 
borrowing this train of illustration ? 



108 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



And if I deny or evade these debts, and 
assert that my industry, my learning, my 
eloquence, my talent, have produced this 
book, I may still be reminded that I can't get 
a second copy of it out without borrowing 
the aid of thousands of the living and dead ; 
dead men who invented letters and types 
and presses; living compositors, proofread- 
ers, editors, business managers ; and then 
can't sell it without the help of another 
army of men who make the newspapers I 
advertise it in, ragged boys on the street to 
cry the papers, postmen and expressmen to 
carry the book, shopmen to handle it. 
Have I the impudence to say, "I did 
this ? Still it is nothing unless men buy 
it. Suppose they could not read it ? Sup- 
pose there had been no teachers of reading ? 
To those teachers I owe a debt. What 
justice is there that can release me from the 
duty of acknowledging that the world has 
lent me its industry, its talent, in making 
this book ? 

Whatever you are, whatever you do, 
whatever you possess, you are, you do, you 
possess, because of others. You have not 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



109 



made yourself; therefore you have no right 
to yourself. You do nothing of yourself ; 
therefore you have no right to appropriate 
for yourself the gain from anything you do. 
For all you are, and all you gain, you are 
indebted to other men. The New Obedi- 
ence — nay: the religion of Jesus Christ, with 
its calm and terrible justice — tells you that 
you must pay the debt. 

I have no desire to represent the Way as 
more difficult than it really is ; neither would 
I qualify the least particular for the purpose 
of making it less stern a thing. How to 
pay the debt is no easy matter to determine. 
I have expressed the opinion that the justice 
of the Christian ethic does not demand the 
surrender of property by those who control 
it, but that it does require the administration 
of property in the interest of those whose 
jointure it is. Were one disposed to release 
its possession, there is no tribunal consti- 
tuted for its receipt. There is open to a 
proprietor none but a cowardly course, ex- 
cept in continuing in control of property to 
which no other can show better administra- 



no 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



tive right, taking care that what personal 
advantages it bestows upon him be not with- 
held from flowing out to his fellows in deeds 
of ministry, and that no niggardly part be 
directed to specific tasks of public benefi- 
cence in intelligent exercise of the respon- 
sibility which has been providentially laid 
upon him. 

It will, however, be found that the dispo- 
sition of large parts of all increments and 
incomes will be determined by the plainest 
considerations of common justice. The 
rapid rises in values and the vast incomes 
which our social institutions enable indi- 
viduals to appropriate, are usually trace- 
able directly to movements or labours of 
others. To these others, then, they belong. 
There can no longer continue regarding these 
things the evasion which a less serious ap- 
prehension of human kinship hitherto has 
permitted. The time has come in which it 
must be plainly declared, with all the author- 
ity the priests of God can give the declara- 
tion, that unearned gains are immoral gains. 
The proprietors of business enterprises who 
would be Christians will carefully consider 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



Ill 



who are actually the makers of their profits, 
and will distribute them equitably among 
those who earned them, reserving only their 
own just share. Most serious will be the 
conclusions which landowners and proprie- 
tors of money or invested funds must face. 

There is in particular one kind of property 
to which no moral right can be pretended. 
Where land has been made, as we say, in 
the sea, or saved from wasting tides, some 
shadow of right to possession of it can be 
conceived, but to that which, in the nature 
of the case, no man could have had any part 
in producing, no man can acquire an honest 
title. The invalidity of land tenures is so 
clear that the conclusion seems inevitable 
that Christians should as speeedily as possible 
free themselves from complicity in the grave 
wrong by which the common birthplace and 
inheritance of all is parcelled out among a 
few selected according to no principle of 
justice. An immediate requisition is that 
owners should with the greatest care set 
aside for the public benefit all land rents. 
Improvements are not involved in the col- 
lapse of title to the land on which they stand, 



112 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



though it is manifest that such part of the 
value of improvements as is due to their 
location in the midst of a dense population, 
is justly the property of the population, and 
that increments in values caused by the 
gathering of a community, belong to the 
community. 

Closely connected with the subject of rents 
is that of " interest." A perfectly plain 
duty is here laid upon those who undertake 
the obedience of Christ. By no Christian 
or moral principle can " interest " be justi- 
fied. As a matter of abstract justice, it 
might conceivably be maintained that the 
lender should pay the borrower. In the 
wear and tear of the world, amid the deteri- 
oration to which all property is subject, it 
is an advantage to be able to hand over to 
another, for safe-keeping, wealth for which 
I have no present use, in the certainty of 
receiving it again undiminished after months 
or years. It is plainly unjust that my neigh- 
bour should accomplish this service for me, 
and yet be called upon further to pay me for 
allowing him to do it. 

The practice of exacting rent for the use 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



"3 



of money is opposed not alone to every in- 
stinct of honour, but to justice. The dislike 
of its proper name, usury, is an indication 
that its shamefulness is instinctively recog- 
nized. It is only since the beginning of the 
commercial era that behind a euphonic name 
has been tolerated a practice which the ab- 
solute consensus of Christian thought repro- 
bates. In no previous age has the Church 
had anything but the fiercest denunciation 
for it. In line with Greek philosophy, He- 
brew legislation and even Roman jurispru- 
dence, (neither the Law of the Twelve Tables 
nor the Institutes of Justinian countenanced 
it;) with the ethics of the Old Testament 
and of the New Testament, with the words 
of Jesus 15 and of His Apostles, the whole 
line of Church Fathers and decree after de- 
cree of Church Councils forbid it. I assert 
that the entire body of Christian teachers 
speaks here with one voice. There is no 
character whom the Fathers so abhor and 
detest as they do the usurer. " If thou 
wert an interest-taker/' exclaims St. Augus- 
tine, 16 " thou wouldst be rebuked by the 
Church, confuted by the word of God, all 

8 



114 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



thy brethren would execrate thee." " How 
detestable, odious and execrable a thing it 
is, I believe even usurers themselves know." 
St. Chrysostom is continually thundering 
at the enormity of selling a kindness; he 
struggles for words with which to denounce 
what the Fathers regard as " the last 
pitch, the last extremity of inhumanity.' ' 
" Nothing, nothing is baser than usury; 
nothing more cruel. Why, the calamities of 
others are this person's traffic; he makes 
gain of his brothers' distresses, and demands 
wages for being kind." Replying to the 
old and slender argument in which the fruit- 
fulness of capital is alleged, he wants to 
know if the lender is not " ashamed of the 
very folly of the thing. For what could be 
more foolish, unless one were to expect in- 
crease without land, rain or plough ?" St. 
Basil likewise demolishes the pretence that 
money can beget money, set up by those 
who " plant without land, reap without 
seed." The great Cappadocian, whose 
stern sense of right and keen logic have 
singled him out for denunciation by the 
modern money power as the primitive social- 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



ist, admits that there is possible " a breed 
of barren metal/ ' " It may well be called 
a generation — a generation of vipers, evil 
offspring of evil parentage." The idea that 
good can come out of lending for " inter- 
est" surpasses, he declares, the riddle of 
Sampson. " Out of the inhuman come forth 
humanity ? Men do not gather grapes of 
thorns, figs of thistles, nor humanity of 
usury. Twelve per cent, men ! Ten per 
cent, men! I shudder to mention them. 
They are exactors by the month, like the 
demons who produce epilepsy, attacking the 
poor as the changes of the moon come 
round!" 

Of later representative Christians, 17 Bishop 
Jewell, after defining usury, describes its 
effects in language which is recalled by the 
disinterested conclusions of that most grim 
and terrible of contemporary treatises, Mr. 
Brooks Adams's Law of Civilization and 
Decay. The exaction of " interest " is, says 
the Bishop, 

4 ' ... such a kind of bargaining as 
no good man, or godly man, ever used; 



Il6 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



such a kind of bargaining as all men that 
ever feared God's judgment have always 
abhorred and condemned. . . . It is a 
monster in nature ; the overthrow of mighty 
kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing 
states ; the decay of wealthy cities ; the plague 
of the world, and the misery of the people. It 
is theft ; it is the murdering of our brethren ; 
it is the curse of God, and the curse of the 
people. . . . Tell me, thou wretched 
wight of the world, thou unkind creature, 
which art past all sense and feeling of God; 
which knowest the will of God and doest 
the contrary : how darest thou come into the 
church ? It is the church of that God which 
hath said, ' Thou shalt take no usury ' ; and 
thou knowest He hath so said. How darest 
thou read or hear the word of God ? It is 
the word of that God which condemneth 
usury; and thou knowest He doth condemn 
it. How darest thou come into the company 
of thy brethren ?" 

And of faithful priests of God in modern 
times, who have dared declare the law of 
His Church, one, preaching in Lombard 
Street itself, has used such words as these : 

" I do openly declare that every minister 
and every churchwarden throughout all Eng- 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 



117 



land are actually perjured and forsworn 
by the 109th canon of our Church, if they 
suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament 
till he be reformed, — and there is no refor- 
mation without restitution. . . . And 
that ye may know what usury is forbid by 
the word of God, turn to Ezekiel xviii., 8, 
13, and you will find that, whoever giveth 
upon usury, or taketh any increase, — mark 
it ! — he that taketh any increase, above the 
principal, — not six in an hundred, but let it be 
never so little, and never so moderate, — he 
that taketh any increase, is a usurer, and such 
an one as shall surely die for his usury, and 
his blood shall be upon his own head. This 
is that word of God by which you shall all 
be saved or damned at the last day, and all 
those trifling and shuffling distinctions that 
covetous usurers ever invented shall never 
be able to excuse your damnation. 

" Heretofore all usurious clergymen were 
degraded from Holy Orders and all usurious 
laymen were excommunicated in their life- 
time and hindered Christian burial after 
death, till their heirs had made restitution 
for all they had gotten by usury/ ' 

Such, without possibility of denial, has 
always been the Christian position as ex- 
hibited — until late days — in the actual prac- 



Il8 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



tice of the Church, no less than in the uniform 
texts of its canons, decrees and definitions, 
and the consentient teaching of its Doctors 
and Fathers. In this particular, therefore, 
at least, I am calling, not for some new, un- 
heard-of interpretation of Christian duty, 
but for the return of renegades and apostates 
to the standard adhered to with absolute 
unanimity through all the earlier centuries. 

But the complexity of the modern social 
organization makes the ancient rule so much 
more difficult! It does not render it any 
less righteous. It would involve so much, 
— so many private fortunes, so many educa- 
tional and religious foundations, even ! It 
would disturb all values, it would upset the 
world ! Why, the preachers of such a doc- 
trine advocate revolution ! Jesus was some- 
thing of a revolutionist. He was executed 
in the name of good order. The Apostles 
were the detested social conspirators of their 
day. Everywhere they went, they set the 
cities in an uproar. They made no attempt 
to conceal it : they were seeking to turn the 
world upside down, saying that there is an- 
other King, one Jesus. 



THE PRESENT DUTY. 119 

It is all very hard ? It is hard. Those 
who embrace the doctrine will suffer ? Truly 
they will. Their dependents will suffer ? 
All are involved in the common fate, and 
the innocent must bear the sins of the 
guilty. Many are doing that now, of neces- 
sity. Salvation will come when some vol- 
untarily take up the burden. The way of 
salvation is the Way of the Cross. 

The Way of the Cross — can none be found 
to enter upon it ? — Upon the answer which 
some perhaps of us will give hangs the de- 
cision in the minds of the millions living and 
to follow, as to whether Jesus Christ were a 
crack-brained poet, or very and eternal God 
inhuman flesh, assumed to persuade us, with 
the invincible convincing power of infinite 
love, how we ought to live ; Who died upon 
the Cross to give us strength to imitate His 
brave contempt for dignities and ease; as to 
whether He were a phantom who performed 
a part and vanished, or is an eternal Saviour 
Who, in the guise of His majesty radiant 
through humility, infallibly dwells among 
His people still, bruised, wounded, covered 
with reproach, misunderstood, denounced, 



120 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



— yet revealing Himself in deeds of midnight 
ministry by sick-beds and in godless streets, 
of sacrificial service to the ungrateful and 
despised ; a Christ witnessed to, and shown, 
in the pure devotion of His faithful priests; 
glorified in the wide, uncalculating dedica- 
tion to Him of their riches by those who 
have learned that riches have no value ex- 
cept in His service ; triumphing in the hero- 
ism of men who in His name renounce all 
opportunities for legal and respectable, but 
unjust, gain; winsome with the loveliness 
of holy women who devote their lives to 
His service. 18 

On the decision of some between Obedi- 
ence and rejection, it depends, I do believe 
in profound sincerity, whether Christianity 
is to be hereafter for the world a myth, a 
fable, a dissolving superstition, or the wis- 
dom and the power of God for the salvation 
of the race of men. 



Almighty and merciful God, by thine inspira- 
tion enkindle in us the desire to seek the courts 
of thy heavenly City, and by thy grace give us 
the will even now confidently to enter them; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. 19 

Amen. 



VI. 

THE NEW FREEDOM. 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



It is possible that the writers who have 
lately been applying the category of evolu- 
tion to the study of the history of society 
are not quite as convincing as they are cap- 
tivating. In large outlines, nevertheless, 
there does assuredly emerge a sketch of the 
evolution which the race is undergoing. 
Thus we see the processes of selection and 
survival at work through all the phases of a 
conflict old as the world, and of which the 
end does not yet appear, a conflict terrible 
and tragic, the horrors of whose early scenes 
are mercifully hid from our gaze by the dim- 
ness of a dawn which the imagination is able 
but feebly, and desires not at all, to pierce. 
When at length the morning of history re- 
veals man, he is a creature normally at war, 
first with his neighbours, and then, in union 
with his neighbours, against other armed 
groups of savages. Under the grim condi- 
tions of the law of natural selection, warlike 
societies give way before others of superior 



126 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



prowess. At the end of a long succession, 
at last the process in the West comes into 
the survey of definite history, and we see 
Babylonia and Egypt giving way before As- 
syria, Assyria before Persia, Persia before 
Greece, and Greece before Rome. In the 
state, which is a military organization, those 
who are gifted with — at first — personal 
strength or courage, or— later — superior mar- 
tial cunning, are the dominant figures. 
Those who cannot fight, organize war or 
direct campaigns, are enslaved. The type of 
the soldier is selected. The strongest peo- 
ples survive, and in their midst a military 
aristocracy is evolved. 

But the process has only begun. The 
soldier is not the ultimate type. Devotion, 
growing strong and wild, to an ideal called 
Freedom, permeates the subjected social 
classes; the attack of battle is developed 
beyond the possibility of defence ; the final 
form of martial society, Feudalism, falls. 
The ascendency of the soldier is destroyed, 
society is disarmed, and the people are liber- 
ated for existence on a footing of equal civil 
opportunity. 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



127 



But does the struggle cease ? By no 
means. It merely changes form. It be- 
comes more refined, less heroic. It is con- 
ducted now as a rule without violence, and 
with its conditions regulated by a body of 
law. Glory, bodily function, generous risk 
upon the field, — none of these things now 
decorate its mercilessness. The character- 
istics which give success now are not those 
which were valuable in the armed struggle. 
Subtlety, craft, cold, determined avarice, 
boldness in manipulating prices, readiness 
to profit by misfortune of others, — the mer- 
cenary, not the martial, instincts furnish the 
endowments which are now availing, and 
which are now chosen for survival. At the 
beginning of the commercial era, the pro- 
ducer prospers, as the great guild halls of 
thirteenth century and fourteenth century 
Europe attest. Then merchant adventurers 
like Child and Boulton have their turn ; but 
in the end those slier intellects who perceive 
the possibility of dealing no longer in com- 
modities, but in money, — the gentry headed 
by the Landgrave of Hesse's Court-Jew, 
Mayer of the Red Shield, the Lloyds, the 



128 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



Barings, the Goldschmidts, the Morgans; — 
these, by the inevitable process with which 
modern science has become so familiar, be- 
come the lords. I am entirely dispassionate, 
and perhaps I had better term them princes, 
though why it should be thought nicer to 
be called a commercial prince than a money 
lord, I don't understand. These persons 
are the flower and crown of society as it is 
to-day; to them belong the highest titles, 
the utmost honour; the race owes them its 
blessings and its prayers for the multipli- 
cation of their progeny. Provided, that is, 
that competition for material possession be a 
proper principle upon which to establish so- 
ciety. We have thought it such. We have 
honoured the mercantile principle by magnifi- 
cent temples, in days when it appears impos- 
sible to build God a decent church, and by 
reserving the sanctions of life for our most 
successful mercenaries. Under our enthusi- 
astic encouragement, mercenary ability has 
been in wide circles sharpened and strength- 
ened. Our acceptance of the principle of 
contest for possession has enthroned the 
Rothschilds, and its continued acceptance 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



129 



will perpetuate their ascendency and ac- 
complish the extinction of such human 
creatures as are not adapted to the com- 
mercial struggle. The process of evolution 
has culled an aristocracy of usurers. The 
selected type is to-day the money-dealer, in 
Bombay the Marwari, in London the Jew. 20 
Now, it is useless, it is absurd and unmanly, 
to quarrel with the law by which those who 
possess appropriate talents become the rulers 
of the society to which they are peculiarly 
adapted. If we object to the character of 
those who are exalted, our recourse is to 
change the trend of the process by giving 
the struggle another object. Let us not 
quarrel with the law. It seems disastrous ; 
may it not be able to reveal itself as benefi- 
cent ? It has produced ignoble types ; may 
it not be capable of producing great ones ? 
By its operation great soldiers have been 
developed, and great money lords ; is it not 
conceivable that it may yet bring forth great 
saints ? 

Suppose it were to come about that men 
were convinced that not gain but giving, not 
success but service, is the proper object of 

9 



130 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



their competition. Imagine the contest for 
acquisition transformed into one of generos- 
ity. Conceive what the evolutionary pro- 
cess would work out were men to compete 
in sacrifices, were they to seek to give 
their labour to others instead of obtaining 
that of others for themselves. What a 
type of man would be the result ! Would 
it not be that the ensample of which ap- 
peared in Him to whose obedience I am 
calling you ? Would there not result the 
collapse of the ascendency of wealth, and 
the selection for survival of those gifted in 
the qualities of unselfishness and humility ? 
Is not the prophecy of the Son of Man con- 
ceivably a statement of the outcome of the 
process, seen by its author and representa- 
tive as one born out of due time ?« — " The 
meek shall inherit the earth." Is not such 
a consummation of the law just that to 
which looks the great hymn of democracy 
which the Church sings daily ? " He hath 
put down the mighty from their seat, and 
hath exalted the humble and meek" The 
humble and meek, those who are to be 
exalted, the ultimate selection, the realiza- 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



131 



tion of the effort of the long course of hu- 
man history, — may it not be that they are 
the " humiliores " of Tacitus, " quos vulgos 
Christianos appellabat ' ' ? 

This is precisely what the obedient must 
look for and direct their energies to hasten. 
It must be asserted — asserted by the vivid 
speech of lives committed to its truth — that 
material acquisition is not the true end of 
human endeavour; that prosperity is not 
worth one pang of effort, nor its absence of 
regret. Some fine scorn of it all must make 
it understood that nothing is so extremely 
vulgar as " success." There must stand up 
an order of men who repudiate the ordinary 
objects of toil. There must be organized a 
concert of men who, by calmly denying 
them, will confound the conventional stand- 
ards of the world. There must arise an aris- 
tocracy of men who might " succeed/ ' but 
will not ; who might acquire wealth, power, 
position, fame, but decline to do so; who, 
having within reach all that men now spend 
their lives striving for, despise it, preferring 
to the pleasure of getting the joy of giving. 



132 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



The immediately noticeable characteristic 
of these aristocrats — the first peculiarity 
which would lift them from the proletariate 
and constitute them lords, would be this: 
their unpurchasableness. 21 Their talents 
would not be for sale. The method of mod- 
ern society is that of bargain ; the struggle 
for existence takes the form of a contest in 
prices. Under the older form, men were 
forced to give their services ; they were en- 
slaved by arms. To-day they are bought. 
The workingman, the artist, the priest, sell 
their work to the lords, operating their 
machinery, beautifying their palaces and 
comforting their consciences, for hire. This 
fraternity of high-born souls will be one of 
men who have no price. They will paint no 
pictures, give wings to no music, utter never 
a sentence of gratifying eloquence, for the 
sake of advancement, applause, or any 
other consideration with which the princes 
have hitherto compelled service. In perfect 
good humour, they will decline to submit to 
compulsion. They will give their services— 
here is the splendid pride of the aristocrat 
— they will give them freely, at their own 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



133 



motion and of their own will, disdaining any 
pay but the joy of the exercise and the sat- 
isfaction of independence; they will pour 
themselves out in service, spending every 
gift in continuous ministry to their brothers, 
toiling, suffering, sacrificing, but scorning to 
stipulate for those rewards which the vulgar 
look upon as the ends of life. 

I confess to some confidence that, how- 
ever those who delight to call themselves 
practical may have regarded many things I 
have said in the course of these addresses, 
it cannot but be generally felt that the form 
the programme of Christian obedience takes 
to-day has something to say for itself as a 
sane and practical proposition. Tell me, 
what is there in the standard I propose 
which prevents any man's or woman's em- 
bracing it in perfect serenity ? There is no 
hysteria about it. I cannot, I find, in talk- 
ing about it maintain a rapturous strain of 
discourse. I hope it is a rather fine, a rather 
noble standard, but it is perfectly within any 
one's power to make it his. Indeed, the un- 
written codes of the professions already en- 
join it. The common feeling emphatically 



134 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



demands that a clergyman should serve for 
considerations other than his salary. The 
theory of the legal profession is that the 
attorney and the counsel are officers of jus- 
tice, assisting the judge and the jury in the 
administration of the law ; it is only of late 
that a lawyer's fee could be collected by pro- 
cess. Reputable physicians will not consort 
with one who patents a therapeutic secret. 
I want to know why this ennobling concep- 
tion should be thought good for men in cer- 
tain few only of all possible careers. I call 
for faithfulness to it where it is held, and for 
its extension to all callings and walks of 
life. 

It would be a grateful task to sketch the 
social revolution which would come in with 
this idea as, from class to class, from man to 
man, spreads the determination to render 
service for its own sake and not for that of 
reward. The fever of " getting on " would 
be assuaged, the madness in which now busi- 
ness is driven would be cured, the plague of 
ambition which prevents happy marriages 
would be allayed, and, men dwelling in quiet- 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



135 



ness and contentment, unnatural manners, 
false estimates and mistaken distinctions 
would disappear. I cannot ask you to fol- 
low me into a consideration of hopes which 
I allow myself to indulge, but I am moved 
to speak definitely to-day of two particulars 
in which the conception might be expected 
to become at once effective. 

First, the obscure posts of life will no 
longer go unmanned; men of ability will 
devote themselves to the problems of the 
villages and the country, and our rural dis- 
tricts, which are now obviously paganizing, 
will be redeemed. 

Second, men of education and refinement 
will demonstrate, by taking it up, the dig- 
nity of manual labour, and the hand-crafts 
will be revived. 

Mr. Maurice has somewhere called upon 
us to contemplate the effects of Christianity 
as they are apparent in the differences be- 
tween the state of the Christian and the non- 
Christian lands, and then he has proposed 
the question : If you were ignorant of the 
facts, and were told that all this is due to 
the life of one man some centuries ago, 



136 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



what sort of a figure would rise in your 
imagination ? Doubtless we should picture 
an imposing personage, philosopher, states- 
man or warrior, moving among the great of 
the earth, habituating its chief cities, occu- 
pied with large concerns and imperial deeds. 
We should see him taking up one great in- 
terest after another, moving out from the 
city of his birth (doubtless the world's capi- 
tal) to other centres of men, extending his 
grasp further and further, until his influence 
and as well his bodily presence, were known 
in every part of the domain over which he 
sought power. 

Such are not the facts. He was born in 
a sheep-village. For thirty years He lived 
in complete obscurity in the house of a car- 
penter in the poorest and most insignificant 
town of a despised backwoods province, a 
town whose name rendered into English 
would be perhaps " Bushtown," and of 
which it was said as a proverb, Can any 
good thing come out of it ? Then for three 
years He walked about in the country around 
His home, preaching to the peasants. A few 
times He went down to the chief city of the 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



137 



province and made speeches in the streets 
and public places. They crucified Him 
there at thirty-three, and His foot had never 
been set sixty miles away from His village 
home. 

Why didn't He gather round Him the 
learned and great, instead of the motley 
crowd of fishermen and illiterates, a tax- 
agent the most respectable of the lot ? 
Why didn't He go to Rome or Athens and 
head a dignified movement ? Is anyone 
prepared to say that that life has filled the 
world in spite of the blunder that confined 
it to a petty field ? Is anyone ready to 
affirm that that life may not in this also be 
an example ? There is no merit in living in 
a mean place ; the man who spends his life 
in a small position is not, on that account, 
more praiseworthy than one who spends his 
at great things. But the life of Jesus of 
Nazareth teaches us that a man may be a 
greater man, doing greater things, at an 
obscure post, than another in a conspicuous 
one. The results of the faithfulness of the 
Man of Galilee to the work that came to 
His hand in His native countryside shows 



138 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



that the ultimate influence of one's career 
does not depend upon the pretentiousness 
or picturesqueness of his deeds nor the 
importance of the place in which he does 
them. The earth which has felt the foot- 
steps of the Son of God is everywhere holy. 
When the Incarnate Deity chose to walk 
among the hills of Judea rather than in 
capitals where honour inconceivable might 
have been His, — the outposts of life, the ob- 
scure positions, were made those which the 
noblest among men will ever be proud to 
occupy. 

The revival of the hand-crafts will be in- 
evitable when we have ceased to regard la- 
bour as merely a means of " getting on." 
To-day abilities, accomplishments and even 
education are valued, not for their own 
sakes, but because they give their possessor 
advantage in the struggle for position. 
John's father is a mechanic, and his mother 
does her own work. They manage with 
many sacrifices to send John through col- 
lege. Their hope is that he may be able to 
set up in a profession and " go in good 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



139 



society ; M and very likely he does migrate 
to the city, and hang a shingle. Then his 
parents are proud to think that they have a 
son higher up in the world than themselves. 
Beautiful as their unselfishness is, is theirs 
not nevertheless a mistaken view ? Is there 
anything essentially more dignified in being 
a lawyer or a physician than in being a me- 
chanic ? Nine cases in ten, wouldn't John do 
better, and be happier, to come back and 
take a place by his father's side at the bench? 
— bringing to the mechanical problems there 
to be met, to the execution of the work 
there to be done, the disciplined mind, the 
fulness of knowledge, the trained eye, that 
he has gained at college — bringing to the 
state of life unto which God has called him 
an acquaintance with the great thoughts of 
the past and with living men, with history, 
literature and the principles of art, bring- 
ing a power of observation, reflection and 
enjoyment, which would decorate not only 
his own life but the lives of his neighbors, 
and glorify waste places with grace and 
beauty. I know not how to imagine a fig- 
ure more admirable than that of one with 



HO THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



ability to gain any station, content in a 
humble one ; with talents to gain any emi- 
nence, satisfied to use them in adorning the 
plain of human existence; employing his 
accomplishments not in overreaching, but in 
ministering to, the neighbours of his birth, 
the fellows of his native fortunes. 

Such men will import into that world 
whose affairs they make their own, a spirit 
which will not merely dignify labour, but will 
elevate the character of its product. They 
will not long be satisfied to let machinery do 
what their hands can do better and with 
pleasure, and the stupid, hideous, and bru- 
talizing factory system, which crushes out 
of the souls of workmen all joy and zest, 
will pass away. Machinery will have its use 
for menial offices, but no created thing will 
spring from any loins but those of a man, 
with brain and eye and digital skill to invest 
his direct creations with a quality which me- 
chanical processes cannot match. One of 
the purest of the joys attainable on earth is 
lost, and will thus be found again: the joy 
of creation. It matters little, or nothing at 
all, of what : whether of a poem or a boot 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 141 



or a picture. The combination amuses you ? 
It should not be amusing. They all are 
products of thought and dexterity, and the 
creative instinct satisfies itself in one as 
truly as in another. God created the starry 
heavens and the flowery meadows, and wove 
the curtains of crimson and gold that hang 
in the west at the sunsetting, and He made as 
well a great many things not at all beautiful 
to sight or hearing or smell. Yet without 
doubt He delighted in it all, looking upon 
everything that He had made and pronounc- 
ing it very good. The Greeks, you know, 
called any man who made anything, a poet, 
and any product of workmanship, a poem. 
It is only now in days less noble artistically 
that we restrict the name to a certain sort 
of manufactured thing, and the title to a 
certain sort of workman. You see it is ter- 
rible evidence against us of to-day, — evidence 
that we have lost sight of the artistic qual- 
ity that all labour may have. Is the man 
who wrote The Life and Death of Jason any 
more truly a poet than he who printed it so 
exquisitely at the Kelmscott press ? the 
dreamer of the dream of The Earthly Par- 



142 



THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



adise than the craftsman who was baking 
tiles, cutting types, making wall paper and 
weaving carpets, until just now when the 
Master Workman called him to other tasks 
in His nearer presence ? An aristocracy of 
handicraftsmen, working for love of bringing 
into the world forms of beauty, would be a 
guild of poets of a noble sort ; and none of 
the great inspired ones who have loved and 
sung of Truth, and agonized to express the 
hopes, the passions of the soul, who have 
held aloft the lamp of Beauty to illume the 
path for humankind, — none more worthily 
merit the laurel than those who serve hu- 
manity, obeying the call of the Spirit to 
wield the hammer and ply at the loom. 

Only so, mark me well ! only so will Art 
revive. The conception of the beautiful 
cannot be maintained apart from the realiza- 
tion of it. Neither can poets, architects nor 
painters be born so long as those whose 
task it is to give reality to their dreams are 
looked upon as less noble. The architect 
and the mason, the painter and the colour- 
grinder, the poet and the printer, must be 
fellows. The arts spring from the crafts. 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



143 



They are the flower and fruitage of the faith- 
ful creation of humble things, of honest de- 
votion to Truth for love of it, widespread 
among the people. Art is not a thing which 
can be produced to order. Criticism, Uni- 
versity Extension lectures (I give them my- 
self, and know), the multiplication of copies 
of old pieces, — no amount of it all will pro- 
duce a national Art. We shall never have 
any national Art until every village black- 
smith and every village carpenter looks upon 
himself as an artist. No Art will arise among 
us so long as the nation's workers are bound 
in a hateful servitude which keeps them 
making, their lives long, the heel of a boot, 
or the spindle of a chair, or some fiftieth part 
of something else. Certainly, also — the 
Reverend Mr. Dearmer is right — it is vain 
to expect Art until our abominable catalogue 
slavery is abolished, so that when we want 
to furnish our houses or churches, we shall 
not order a No. 48 mantel, or a No. 34 altar, 
or — horrid wickedness! — chalice 17 B, but 
shall turn a man loose (having men to turn 
loose) to make what need requires, but to 
make it in freedom, honouring the Spirit who 



144 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



will inspire the cunning workman still, as He 
did Bezaleel and Aholiab. 

I am far from cherishing much expectation 
that all this, or anything like it, can be real- 
ized in any set way. I believe and hope 
only that as an ideal it may go abroad, to 
touch true hearts here and there, and some- 
how work out into reality of some form, 
perhaps unrecognizable by me. It is, how- 
ever, conceivable that a deliberate effort to 
embody it in a visible brotherhood might 
succeed. If a number of Christian men and 
women were to accept the ideas which I have 
tried to set forth, might they not with ad- 
vantage assemble and together work out a 
practical realization of them ? Some might 
cultivate the ground, some build, some fur- 
nish houses, others give their labours to the 
craft or art or study in which they were 
skilled. A little foundry, a hand press and a 
loom might be set up. Honest manufactures, 
and then artistic ones, might be engaged in : 
making of furnishings for houses, churches, 
public buildings; of brasses, carven wood, 
organs, books (good ones in worthy editions), 
apparel (always tasteful, and, if possible, 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



145 



beautiful and rich). In time, to the group 
would be added, or within it would be de- 
veloped, painters, poets, students, novelists 
(but not of the problem novel), scientists, liv- 
ing simple lives amid beautiful things, work- 
ing in freedom and joy, and stooping to re- 
ceive no price for their achievements. Some 
would carry on experiments in the interests 
of medical science. Some would devote 
themselves to the law, appearing in courts 
for the defence of the poor, or formulating 
the extensions and refinements of the com- 
'mon law, which changed and changing con- 
ditions here so loudly demand. Some would 
translate; some would philosophize. Here 
would be rivalled the works of St. Maur, of 
Port Royal, of Merton in Surrey. 

I do not assert that anything like this is 
practicable or possible, but I do assert that, 
if it were, it would furnish conditions under 
which crafts, sciences and arts would flour- 
ish as they have never flourished in this land. 

At any rate, if not in such fashion of liv- 
ing, there must and there will — for the Spirit 
who teaches me to talk of it will lead, nay : 
already is leading, others to practise it — be 

IO 



146 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



exhibited this ideal incarnate variously in 
men, here one, there one ; in men striving to 
surpass each other in service, despising the 
world's contemptible prizes and renouncing 
its vulgar, greedy way; living in plainness 
and contentment, and in godly leisure, with 
time to lie in the sun and to wander out of 
doors amid the big, fine-smelling things; 
working gleefully at any honest task; free 
sons of the earth, her own nobility, abiding 
in sweet places or roaming at will ; learning 
to be pure and healthy, strong of leg and 
arm, keen of eye and dexterous; attuned 
again to Creation's harmony, knowing, and 
knowing how to picture, her moods and 
thoughts ; men mighty and kind, simple men, 
giving their souls' throbs out, as anciently, 
to the great classic themes of Honour and 
Love and War. 

To-day I have represented the New Obe- 
dience, as certainly it may be represented, 
as the rendering, after Christ's example and 
according to His commands, of unhired ser- 
vice. I have characterized these labourers as 
a new nobility, and I have tried to suggest 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



147 



that the natural selection of such an order 
might conceivably be regarded as a phe- 
nomenon of social evolution. 

One of the features of a highly perfected 
society will be the large degree of liberty 
which its members enjoy. I am inclined to 
imagine that the goal of social evolution 
might be described in a large way as the 
realization of a state of perfect freedom. 
Need I now point out, in terms, how glorious 
is the freedom which this aristocracy will 
possess ? Though not alone nor chiefly in 
this, a peculiar freedom will be theirs in the 
fact that they will be delivered from depend- 
ence upon elusive and perishable things. 
Happiness, after all, requires no parapher- 
nalia. It is the fault of the modern social- 
istic propaganda that it is concerned too 
much with circumstances, environments, 
external conditions of life. We cannot re- 
frain from earnestly desiring and labouring 
for the amelioration of the hard conditions 
which surround the unfortunate. And yet, 
for my part, however passionately I may be 
moved to denounce the wrong of it, and to 
plead for the brightening of their lives, I 



148 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



know that the actual improvement of outward 
living conditions is but an insignificant and 
paltry part of the revolution which is organ- 
izing. Indeed, the first great benefit of the 
Socialism which has my devotion will be, I 
feel sure, among those who are already the 
favoured, will be among the rich and the 
cultured. Theirs will be the incomparable 
beatitude of rendering the New Obedience, 
of proffering social service, with an efficiency 
they perhaps alone can exhibit; they are 
equipped with abilities which the less fa- 
voured do not possess. They will not have to 
learn the lesson of the unsatisfactoriness of 
earthly prosperity, and will be more ready 
to lay it down, than those who have not en- 
joyed it will be to turn from its pursuit be- 
fore they have learned that lesson. I preach 
no movement of the poor against the rich — 
God forbid ! For such of the socially unfa- 
voured as can persuade themselves to forego 
quest of the small liberty which possessions 
confer, and for such of the favoured as yearn 
for deliverance from bondage to their for- 
tune, I preach the possibility of a higher 
Freedom. 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



149 



But chiefly the new nobility will be free as 
other men can never be free, will be assured 
absolutely against enslavement, will be de- 
livered forever from all forms of servitude, — 
just because its members will be forever ren- 
dering service, unforced and unasked. The 
deadliest enemy of slavery is voluntary ser- 
vice. This is again in another form the 
great lesson of the life of the Master who 
rendered, and who exacts, obedience. 
Through Obedience He won Freedom; a 
Servant, He was a King. Do we imagine 
Him as effeminate and submissive ? We 
should do better to try to rise to an appre- 
ciation of His kingliness. In face, figure, 
bearing, He was in the best and truest sense 
a very prince of aristocrats, Who could say, 
1 ' / lay down my life that I may take it again. 
No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down 
of myself. I have power to lay it down, and 
I have power to take it again. " . . . "I 
am among you as He that serveth." "Art 
Thou a king, then ?" ' ' Thou say est that I 
am — a King." Ah! truly, in the words of 
the old collect, servire regnare est. 

Freedom ! Is there nothing stirring for 



ISO THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



the heart in this conception of it ? It has 
ever been a word that set the blood agoing, 
and we have as yet hardly dreamed of it, 
except in its crude form of civil liberty. 
Much has that amounted to ! There are, I 
fear, as many slaves under the Republic as 
the sun ever looked down upon under any 
tyrant of history. We have exchanged the 
shackles of military despotism for those of 
a sordid, gluttonous commercialism. Civil 
liberty is magnificent as an opportunity for 
real Freedom. It is a means only, how- 
ever. We have been content with a name, 
and are still without the reality. Paraphras- 
ing slightly a recent paragraph 22 on one of 
the world's heroes and apostles of liberty, I 
affirm that it cannot be too often declared — 
what was with Mazzini a central conviction, 
central in his creed and still more eloquently 
central in his dedicated life,— -that all the 
blood shed for civil freedom is but as water 
spilt on sand, if, stopping short in fancied 
achievement, men fail to win for themselves 
that true, spiritual, and alone valuable Free- 
dom to which civil liberty is but the gate. 
The process which in beginning I sketched, 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



is the effort of nature to reach the type of 
the free man in a free society. It will 
attain its end when it has lifted above the 
Soldier, and above the Trader, the Servant ; 
when it has passed out of the era of military 
tyranny and that of mercenary slavery into 
the age of the liberty of volunteered ser- 
vice. 

I will paraphrase again, this time not a 
sentiment, but words which thrilled the 
hearts of Young Italy in that glorious war. 
For I believe there is faith among us, and 
patriotism of some real sort, and readiness 
to be offered. This nation is sick at heart 
and starving. It has wasted the substance of 
its youthful vigour in the harlotry of colossal 
materialism, and it has sold itself into sub- 
jection to ideals and standards which reward 
it with husks. It is coming to itself, never- 
theless, if I misjudge not, and already is 
awakening in it a purpose for great deeds 
of honour. Its people will be,— may we not 
boldy trust ? — as eager in a noble cause as 
they have been in unworthy ones, as ready 
to venture in love as in greed. This people 
will be saved when it sees before it an object 



152 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



for its devotion, an object worthier than 
success/' Happy will be the fame of him 
whose heart conceives, and whose lips for- 
mulate and present, that object, revealing it 
in its compelling charm. Already lives, not * 
a few of men and women known to me, lives 
of definite dedication, delineate it and pro- 
phesy its power. As the magnificent auda- 
city of this little company confronts the 
world, who has the boldness to predict what 
it may not effect ! Who dares say what re- 
volution will not be wrought as the fire flies 
from heart to heart, as suddenly in widen- 
ing circles is revealed to the sons of the 
Republic the loftiness of the ideal of social 
sacrifice, captivating the imagination with 
its alluring beauty ! What is hardship, if it 
come ? What is apparent failure? What, to 
a noble, is the ridicule of the mob ? What 
if the devotion requires all, and promises 
nothing — but liberty ! Hear the cry of the 
King to the good hearts of the land, free, yet 
in bondage, a Republic of slaves, — the cry of 
the nation's Christ, as He stands gathering 
the band of her deliverers from the tyranny 
of commercialism : " Young men, follow me ! 



THE NEW FREEDOM. 



153 



I offer you rags, I offer you hunger, I offer 
you scorn, I offer you death ; but if you love 
your country, follow me! Take up the 
Obedience, and lead the nation into Free- 
dom !" 



O God, Protector of the faithful, and Pastor of 
souls obedient unto thee ; Regard, we beseech 
thee, the prayers of the simple, delivering them 
from all base masteries and ordering their devo- 
tions towards things lovely, things sweet and 
high; that, subjugated by thy Beauty and en- 
franchised by thy Truth, in keeping thy com- 
mandments they may walk at liberty; through 
Christ our Lord. 

Amen. 



VII. 

THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 



DURING the progress of these addresses 
you have been invited to consider whether 
the commands uttered by Jesus of Naza- 
reth, apparently as specific directions for 
human conduct even in some of its details, 
were not intended to be actually and liter- 
ally obeyed ; and in particular whether what 
He called the New Commandment of Love, 
promulgated by Him with such solemnity, 
and obeyed by Him with such complete and 
limitless obedience, was not designed to be 
accepted as the law upon which was to be 
founded a new society, a hitherto uncon- 
ceived scheme and order of things, described 
by Himself as the Kingdom of Heaven. 
We have had to face the fact that those 
commands are now given hardly the pretence 
of obedience by those who nevertheless call 
themselves Christians, and we have been 
obliged to confess that " Christianity " is a 
name for something which the world has 
yet to see. If " Christianity " means dis- 



160 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



cipleship of Christ and submission to His 
commands, it contemplates, we have seen, 
a thorough revision of existing standards, 
practices and institutions, and profound 
modifications in individual lives. To the 
proposition that the more difficult maxims 
of conduct laid down by Christ are the 
extravagances of an impracticable religious 
idealist or the rhapsodies of a poet, we have 
given what may be called a most positive 
negative. We have confronted also the more 
plausible position which admits the duty of 
literal obedience to Christ, but postpones 
that duty to the far-off day when all men 
shall agree to it. Although we have allowed 
our vision to stretch away to that time when 
the dominion of the earth shall be the Lord's 
of Love, and human society, refashioned and 
built into the likeness of a City of God, shall 
have become a society in which, rivalry for 
success transformed into rivalry in mutual 
service, every man has opportunity for that 
happiness which is now denied except to the 
few ; although we have seen that such a new 
earth is what Christianity proposes : we have 
been constrained to conclude that the duty 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 161 



of resisting not the evil, of turning the other 
cheek, of lending to every borrower, of re- 
fusing to lay up treasures upon earth, — in 
short, that the duty of obeying Christ, is not 
postponed until such a time as it shall have 
become conducive to happiness to obey Him, 
but that it lies upon us now, whatever its in- 
convenience, however certain to result in ma- 
terial disaster, however certain to cast those 
who embrace it under the feet of the mob 
which riots for part in the good things of the 
world. This stern conclusion we have seen 
no honest way to avoid. The words of 
Christ are explicit; His example is plain. 
The plan of His life is unmistakable. The 
demands He makes of those who undertake 
to follow Him are absolute and uncom- 
promising, and utterly inconsiderate of their 
immediate personal happiness. 

But if I have represented the obedience 
of Christ as a stern thing, it must be my 
business to-day to persuade you that it issues 
in joy. As music out of discord, freedom 
out of service, as out of conflict, peace, and 
out of action, that rest which remaineth 
ii 



162 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



where nevertheless they rest not day nor 
night; in accordance with the divine para- 
dox that works throughout the universe, 
bringing out of death, life ; out of the win- 
ter, the rejuvenescent spring; the paradox 
of finding in losing, of receiving in giving up, 
— in accordance with this mercy of God, the 
world's travail is the process of its salvation, 
and the sternness of the obedience of Christ 
is only promise of the fulness and solemnity 
of the gladness which will be its fruit. 

I will not speak of the personal satisfaction 
even amid personal disaster which will reward 
one who can assure himself that he is living 
a life true to his conception of duty. Ma- 
terial ill-fortune has little power to sadden 
such a soul. Do you fancy St. Paul was sad 
when he stood before Agrippa and averred, 
" I was not disobedient to the heavenly vis- 
ion J ' ? The sunset of life was upon him, 
and his body bore the marks of the long 
day's woe, but underneath its scars, I under- 
take to say, abode a happier spirit than in 
any pampered courtier who looked on him 
that day. They alone know the joy of life 
who have tasted the cup of sacrifice. Their 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 163 



feet who walk the way of the Cross tread the 
path of divinest contentation. Their days are 
vocal with hymning and gladsome with light. 
It is they who come through the great tribula- 
tion that God spreadeth His tabernacle over 
and leadeth unto fountains of waters. He 
who has suffered for the sake of the Kingdom 
has shared already in its glory. 

But I do not speak of that. There is a 
higher felicity, one not to be enjoyed by any 
man, but to be won for the race by the 
Obedience for which I am pleading, — the 
felicity of the world's salvation. The only 
reflection that I have to add to those which 
have occupied us is, that only through that 
about which we have been talking, only 
through the acceptance of and submission 
to Christ's commands, can the Kingdom of 
Heaven be achieved. The Kingdom will 
never be established by the plan of continu- 
ing to violate its laws. The holy Crispinus 
stole leather with which to make shoes for 
the poor, but I have the impression that his 
idea does not, on the whole, make a con- 
vincing appeal to our best judgments. The 
Kingdom will take form before our eyes 



164 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



when we begin to obey its laws, — those im- 
practicable rules of Jesus. We don't know 
what the Kingdom of Heaven is, and we 
shall never know until we begin to live as if 
already we were in it ; then we shall see it 
gradually emerge into realization. 

The method of assuming that things are 
as you would have them, is an efficacious 
one. The best way to make a man a thief 
is to give him the reputation of being one. 23 
And the converse statement is no less true : 
there is no better way to make a man good 
than to allow him to see that you expect him 
to be good. To make men true, trust them. 
To make them brave, take it for granted 
that they are brave. England expected it, 
and Nelson's men did their duty. There is 
no wiser way to set about transforming the 
earth into the Kingdom of Heaven than to 
act as if it were such already. This, I am 
sure, is Christ's programme for His disciples. 
The pioneers in this course will suffer ; some 
of them will lack the common comforts of 
life; but their sacrifices will result in bringing 
about conditions under which their children 
will find the same course easier. The first 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 165 



generation that undertakes the Obedience 
will be ridiculed and despised, but will hand 
down to the future a rich entail. 

Is it not certain that it would be so ? Let 
a few, — even a few only, — set about doing 
the things which Christ tells Christians to do, 
— can anyone doubt how the spectacle of a 
little band fighting evil with good, slander 
with good temper, giving away their posses- 
sions without expectation of return, doing 
good without hope of reward, living the life 
of faith without thought for the morrow, — 
can anyone doubt how that spectacle would 
work upon the world ? I cannot doubt. In 
the first place, it would supply the world 
with what it lacks, — with regret I feel com- 
pelled to say, almost entirely lacks to-day, — 
a body of personal witness to Christ. He is 
not seen to-day in flesh walking our high- 
ways, preaching and showing signs. His is 
an interesting story as it reads in the vener- 
able records that purport to tell of Him. 
But what is to convince the world that He 
lived, and did as the story affirms ? No- 
thing will convince the world, except the 
testimony of men whom the truth of His 



166 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



story has so possessed that they devote them- 
selves to the lifelong task of carrying out 
His words and making their lives like His. 
Nothing will convince the world that Christ 
was, except the evidence that He is. No- 
thing will do it but the evidence, plainly 
given in lives of self-effacement, that Christ 
dwells still on earth, visible in the devotion 
of His saints to the welfare of their fellow- 
men. The Bible won't convince the world; 
the study of nature won't; the statement 
that God once long ago set the seal of mir- 
acle upon His work won't convince the 
world that Jesus of Nazareth is its Saviour. 
The proof, — St. Athanasius saw it long ago, 
— must ever be the miracles which are still 
wrought in the lives of those who believe in 
Him. The ancient champion of the truth 
of the Incarnation had only to point to those, 
then living in every community, who counted 
the world and its treasures nothing and 
lived only to serve their Master, as trium- 
phant evidence of a living Christ. 24 We to- 
day should have a harder time than he of 
the earlier century to find men and women 
whose lives differ from the lives of the world 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 167 



enough to be recognizable as those of men 
and women who know Christ and possess 
His spirit. That there are some such there 
can be no doubt. There has never been 
quite broken the line of men who bear the 
torch and hand it on, and now in the revolu- 
tion of the centuries our turn has come to 
receive it, to suffer it to expire, or to relume 
it to its ancient splendour. A New Obedi- 
ence, have I called it ? Rather, a return to 
the old obedience is what the times demand, 
— the obedience of the days of the Church's 
faith and triumph. 

Yes, they must be put together: — the 
Church's Obedience and the Church's Tri- 
umph. It is idleness to pretend that the 
Church is to-day anything approaching the 
power it should be. We may felicitate our- 
selves that it is awakening to appreciation 
of its office, to realization of the trend of 
the great social movement that is passing 
before its eyes. But we must with shame 
confess that as yet it is miserably and piti- 
ably impotent. We continue in our harm- 
less and pleasant ways in a complacency like 
that of the giant who wist not that his 



1 68 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



strength was departed. The world's influ- 
ence upon us is greater than our influence 
upon the world. We adopt its methods and 
represent its principles, when we ought to 
be persuading it to accept the principles and 
methods of Christ. We can never expect it 
to do that, until we act as if we ourselves be- 
lieved in Christ's principles and had confi- 
dence in His methods. We can never do in 
the world the work Christ intended us to do, 
so long as we are a Church apostate and faith- 
less to His injunctions. Nay, I do not be- 
lieve the Church can much longer continue to 
exist, unless it arouses itself to its duty. The 
temper of the age is not tolerant of orna- 
mental institutions. The world has no need 
for the Church as an association of congenial 
ladies and gentlemen who gratify themselves 
by the weekly use of certain formulas and in- 
dulgence in however seemly and beautiful a 
ceremonial. The Church is not needed as 
a purveyour of entertainment. It is not re- 
quired as a manager of social functions which 
the world itself knows better how to man- 
age. The world has no room for the Church 
except as a divine institution with authority 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 169 



to demand, and persuading charm to win, 
the submission of society to the Master to 
whom it has already given obedience. The 
Church will regain its power when it demon- 
strates its social efficiency ; when it makes it 
plain that it has in keeping the law which 
society needs for its salvation. When the 
divided household of Christ is reassembled 
and absolved from its sin of division, re- 
deemed from its present anarchy, which out- 
rages every notion of the unity and love 
which it pretends to preach ; when its people 
exhibit nothing so much as eagerness in 
sacrifice and unselfishness in devotion, — then 
will the Church be strong to wield again her 
ancient sway over the hearts of men. 

The work of the obedient Church will not 
be to assume direction of every detail of 
social reform. Her work will be to train her 
members individually to loyalty to the King, 
and to make herself an institution more and 
more conforming to the laws of a world 
which is not this one. She will carry on 
with new zeal the corporate acts in which 
she chiefly witnesses to the reality of that 
other world. 25 She will seek out and bap- 



170 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



tize children, in the Name which reveals 
the social character, if I may so speak, the 
essentially and eternally sacrificial character, 
of God, the Holy Triune; she will teach 
them as they grow to manhood the tremen- 
dous social truths of the Catechism ; she will 
hold up for the perpetual contemplation of 
men the sacrifice and tragedy of Calvary, 
and at her altars week by week offer and 
present the reasonable, holy and living sac- 
rifice of the body and souls of those who 
confess Christ their King. This will be her 
work, as it now is, but this must be done 
with new sense of its awful importance, and 
new realization of what it imports for our 
daily lives. This must result in the creation 
of a distinctive type of man, easily cogniz- 
able as a disciple of the Nazarene, until the 
world sees that Christianity is a thing of 
meaning and power, and its heart is softened 
and convinced by the sweet influences that 
flow from unselfish lives like waves that beat 
in unexpected music on shores that know 
nothing of the winds that raised them. 26 

I cannot hope to persuade you in these 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 171 



last minutes of what this course of addresses 
may have failed to make clear. But may I 
not allow myself to hope that, as we approach 
the solemn anniversary of the Passion, it 
will be borne upon some of you, with a force 
which no human words can carry, that dis- 
cipleship of Jesus Christ is a serious under- 
taking, and calls for willingness to follow the 
Truth into deserts and Gethsemanes and 
judgment-halls and to the hill of crucifix- 
ion ; calls for willingness to obey with abso- 
lute disregard of consequences, even to the 
apparently irretrievable defeat of Calvary ? 
You will not contemplate as you should the 
unexampled obedience which we adore on 
Good Friday without a juster conception of 
the duty to which I have felt commissioned 
to call you. Your hearts ache, I know, for 
the sorrow of the world, for the joylessness 
of the lot of the millions who bear the burden 
of our social injustice. You can do some- 
thing to bring near the day when that sor- 
row and joylessness shall cease. Take up 
of your own will the burden which the un- 
fortunate now of necessity bear. Illustrate 
and interpret to this day the law of Sacrifice, 



172 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



which alone can redeem the world. " All 
that Christ asked of mankind wherewith to 
save it was a Cross on which to die/' 27 

Let us try to think more worthily of the 
salvation thus accomplished ; try to think of 
it far otherwise than as a magical perform- 
ance or a judicial transaction. The efficacy 
of Christ's life cannot be assessed in foren- 
sic terms. It is by revealing itself as the 
world's most deeply-grounded and benefi- 
cent law, that the Cross saves the world. All 
that Christ asked of mankind wherewith to 
save it was an opportunity to reveal the 
name and nature of its God. The summit 
of that revelation was Calvary. We miss 
the lesson of the sacrifice the anniversary 
of which approaches, if we fail to see it as 
a temporal and economic manifestation of 
an eternal and essential truth. The story 
of Calvary is not a symbolic tradition, which 
requires to be interpreted idealistically, but, 
nevertheless, the historical event does not 
exhaust the meaning of what is an eternal 
tragedy. The Cross is the expression and 
interpretation in time of what has been 
forever taking place; taking place in the 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 173 



mystery of God's nature, in the Holy Trin- 
ity. God is, He exists by being, Love. 
From the foundation of the world, He also 
has found Himself in losing Himself. In an 
infinite process of Love, in an eternal act of 
Sacrifice, forever stream and have streamed, 
each into the bosoms of the others, Whom 
in our poor speech we name Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost. The revelation which the 
Son perfected on Calvary was the revelation 
of the Social Life of God. 

These heights of thought we may not 
ascend. Closing our studies, it behooved 
us thus far to adventure, that we might gain 
view of the certainty of the world-victory 
prepared for Love. Because God is, we 
may reverently say, a Divine Society, the 
interests of human society are not foreign 
to Him, neither can they be by Him aban- 
doned. God's very self is pledged to the 
triumph of that which is the constitution 
itself of His nature,— to the triumph of un- 
calculating Love, — to the success of the 
silly programme which Christ enjoined. 
What the operation of Love makes Him, it 
must be His will a like process should make 



174 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



the world. As Mercy and Justice, Law and 
Liberty, and all the elements of the prob- 
lems of the Absolute, are reconciled in the 
unity of His Love, His will must be that 
our contradictions shall be solved and set at 
rest by the confession that human society 
must be a society of Love. 

What I am struggling to help you feel is 
that the plan which Jesus followed, and 
which He commends to us, is in correspond- 
ence with the most profound principles of 
the universe and the divine life. The con- 
ceit of the Fathers, that it is an infinite Cross 
imprinted on space which binds the heights 
and depths and breadths and sustains the 
universe, 28 is a poetic statement of a stupen- 
dous truth. Therefore is it that the despised 
symbol has been able to lift itself above the 
centuries in a splendour that grows more 
glorious as time increasingly reveals the 
power in Sacrifice. The roods whereon 
Christ reigns from the Cross tell a truer 
story than those on which He hangs in 
agony. The words of the Christian Cicero 
are not extravagant : the hands extended in 
the Passion are to welcome a great host 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 175 



coming to receive upon their foreheads the 
most august sign. 29 The success of the 
Obedience of Christ is guaranteed not alone 
by the victory which already He has 
achieved, but by the invincibility of the Su- 
preme Will Who has created the universe, 
and ordered it according to laws which flow 
from out the treasuries of His Nature of 
Love. 

The New Obedience! here it is, then; I 
know not whether a vain imagining, or a 
proposal destined under God to be a move- 
ment for the hastening of the triumph of 
His Church, or, what at least it may be 
allowed to be, a phrase which is nothing and 
less than nothing, but which stands for an 
old conception and endeavour which must be 
undertaken with a new vigour. It is an ex- 
pression of faith in Christ, pre-eminently. 
It stands in connection with that large 
thought of the illuminating power of Obedi- 
ence, which in beginning I tried to open to 
you. It seeks the application and energiz- 
ing of the New Learning. It has stern de- 
mands to make upon individuals, churches 



176 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



and nations. It is revolutionary — not vio- 
lently so, but as education and all progres- 
sive movements are, quietly revolutionary. 
It does not break with the past ; it carries 
on and completes it. It knows that the 
Kingdom of Heaven is not a fortress to be 
taken by storm, but a fair city which shall 
more perfectly appear as in the light of 
Truth increasing through Obedience the 
false, the ugly, the incomplete, fade away 
and disappear. 

The New Obedience! it has come into the 
world with its proposal and its promise. 
God will raise up its preachers and it will 
win its disciples, or, once for all, our religion 
will have met its day and have failed. Do 
not fear. It will not fail. The divine folly 
of Love is the victory forever. It will tri- 
umph in the Church, and the Church in the 
world. During these weeks there has been 
before us the figure of One who rendered to 
the utmost the Obedience which He requires. 
His now is the power and the glory, and en- 
throned He assures us of the prevailing po- 
tency of submission to the Law of Love. "He 
became obedient unto death, even the death of 



THE CERTAIN TRIUMPH. 177 



the Cross ; wherefore also God hath highly 

exalted Hint, and given Him the name that is 

above every name, that at the name of Jesus 

every knee should bow, in heaven, and on earth, 

and under the earth, and every tongue confess 

that Jesus Christ is Lord. 9 ' The Pattern of 

our Obedience is the pledge of its Triumph. 
12 



O God of unchangeable power and eternal 
light, look favorably upon thy Church, that won- 
derful and sacred mystery; and by the tranquil 
operation of thy perpetual providence carry out the 
work of man's salvation ; and let the whole world 
feel and see that things which were cast down are 
being raised up, that things which had grown old 
are being made new, and that all things are re- 
turning to perfection through Him from whom 
they took their origin, even through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 30 

Amen. 



NOTES. 




NOTES. 



1 Social Evolution, p. in. 

2 I hope I have not misrepresented the Reverend Doctor 
Brooke Herford. 

3 The Reverend Stanley Hughes, my dear friend, who 
should have written this book, largely inspired me to do it 
by his uncompromising persistence in this contention. 

4 This passage is imitated from one in Dorner's Glau- 
benslehre. Cf. vol. ii., p. 57 (T. & T. Clark). 

5 1 do not know who has written more worthily on this 
great theme than has Professor Henry Jones, a disciple 
greater than his master, in Browning as a Philosophical 
and Religious Teacher. Cf. cap. vi., Browning's Treat- 
ment of the Principle of Love, 

6 Ethics of Citizenship, p. 184. 

7 Social Evolution, p. 192 ff. 

8 This prayer is from the Ambrosian Missal. 

9 Harper's Weekly, Feb. 22, 1896. 

10 The statements made by me in The Forum for Novem- 
ber, 1894, regarding the conditions under which thousands 
of operatives in Fall River pass their lives, have never been 
refuted. 

In The Forum for May, 1896, Miss Clare de Graff en- 
reid, Agent of the United States Census Bureau, gives 
an abstract of her survey of labourers' tenements in this 
country. It was a sufficiently horrifying revelation to 
those who were ignorant on the subject. This passage is 
pathetic: "Going from Fall River to Nashua, I could 



184 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



hardly believe my eyes on seeing the 4 company ' tenements 
there; — rows of good brick houses, with private entrances, 
front and rear and a hall for each entrance, and actually a 
door-bell. Nothing touches my heart and imagination like 
a door-belL After New York and Fall River, these closed 
doors and individual bells were idyllic. They stand for 
the sweet reserve of family life, reposeful days, and peace- 
ful evenings when the schoolgirl is busy with her lessons, 
and the mother lays the cloth and rocks baby's cradle. 
The door-bell means privacy, family life, household gods, 
home." Miss de Graffenreid is authority for the statement 
that eighty-eight thousand persons in Boston live in houses 
containing three or more families each. 

11 Cf. Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ. 

12 The Victory of the Cross, p. 16. 

18 St. Luke, xvii. 21: zdov yap ?) fiatiiAeia rov Bsov 
kvroS vjugjv etfrzV. Cf. Xen., an. i, io, 3; and Hell., 2, 
3, 19- 

14 About one million of copies of Merrie England has 
been printed and sold. The wide distribution of this 
socialistic document is a fact which undoubtedly reaches 
the magnitude of an event. The book's probable effect 
upon the English mind is a grave question. Much of its 
teaching, — that especially which I have borrowed, — I hold 
to be true ; there are particulars which I believe fallacious. 
The reception given this book in England illustrates how 
much more prepared for socialistic advance the older 
country is. It is well-nigh impossible to conceive of any 
V respectable " group of people here in conservative Amer- 
ica discussing Merrie England in the temper, and with 
the degree of sympathy, which has been shown towards it, 
for instance, at Oxford. 



NOTES. 



18 The words, occurring in the parable of the talents 
(St. Matthew xxv. and St. Luke xix.), " Thou oughtest 
therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and 
then at my coming I should have received mine own with 
usury," are sometimes adduced in defence of interest-tak- 
ing. But Christ is not here speaking in His own character. 
This is the advice of one who is described as a " hard" 
and an " austere " man. 

16 References to the quotations in this paragraph are, in 
order, as follows: Aug. in Matt. xix. 21, N. T. Led. 
lxxxvi. 3 (Benedictine ed.); in Ps. xxxvii. 3, 5; Basil in Ps. 
xiv. (xv.), 5 {Horn, ii.); Chrys. in Matt. Horn. v. 9; Horn. 
lvi. 9; Basil in Ps. xiv. (xv.), 3. 

" The Fathers are unanimous," says Gibbon in a note to 
his forty-fourth chapter, mentioning Cyprian, Lactantius, 
Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory Nyssa, Ambrose, Jerome, 
Augustine, and "a host of councils and canonists." He 
might have extended the list. The literary form which the 
discussion takes in ancient writers is most frequently an 
appeal to those who lend, to lend to the Lord. This turn is 
taken in affecting language by many of the Fathers. I 
cannot forbear quoting at somewhat greater length from 
these mentioned in the address. 

" Let us not then traffic in other men's calamities, nor 
make a trade of our benevolence. . . . For to this intent 
thou hast wealth, to relieve poverty, not to make a gain from 
poverty ; but thou with a show of relieving makest the 
calamity greater, and sellest benevolence for money. 

" Sell it, I forbid thee not, but for a heavenly kingdom. 
Receive not a small price for so good a deed : thy monthly 
one per cent. {toko$ euar odriaioS), but the immortal 
life. Why art thou beggarly and poor and mean, selling 



186 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



thy great things for a little, for goods that perish, when it 
should be for an everlasting kingdom? Why dost thou 
leave God, and get human gains ? Why dost thou pass by 
that Wealthy One, and trouble him that hath not? and, 
leaving the sure exchanger, make thy bargain with the 
unthankful ? He longs to pay, but this pays grudgingly. 
He repays with praises and auspicious words, this with 
insults and revilings. He here and there ; this hardly 
here. 

'* Tell me not this, that he is pleased to receive, and is 
thankful for the loan. It is because he is compelled to 
be thankful for thy cruelty. It seems to me as though, 
shouldest thou deliver him from perils, thou wouldest exact 
of him a payment for the deliverance. What sayest thou ? 
' Not so ' ? Delivering him from the greater evil, thou 
wouldest be unwilling to exact money, and for the lesser 
dost thou display such inhumanity ! 

" ' When I have received interest, I give to the poor,' one 
tells me. Speak reverently, O man ; God desires not such 
sacrifices. Deal not subtly with the law. Better not 
give to a poor man, than give from that source. For the 
money that hath been collected by honest labours, thou 
often makest to become unlawful because of that wicked 
increase ; as if one should compel a fair womb to give birth 
to scorpions. 

4 'And never doth the money-dealer enjoy his posses- 
sions, nor find pleasure in them ; but when the interest is 
brought, he doth not rejoice that he hath received gain, 
but is grieved that the interest hath not yet come up to the 
principal. And before this evil off-spring is brought forth 
complete, he compels it also to bring forth, making the 
interest principal, and forcing it to bring forth its untimely 



NOTES. 



187 



and abortive brood of vipers. For of this nature are the 
gains of usury ; more than those wild creatures do they 
devour and tear the souls of the wretched. . . . Let 
us deaden these lawless travailings ; let us dry up this 
place of pernicious teeming, and let us pursue the great 
and true gains alone." (Chrysostom, Sermon on Matt, 
xvi. 28.) 

' ' This usury is the harbinger of hell ; there is one of 
heaven; one coming of covetousness, the other of self-denial; 
one of cruelty, the other of humanity. . . . * What 
dost thou desire ? ' saith one ; 4 that I should give another 
for his use that money which I have got together, and 
which is useful to me, and demand no recompense ? ' No ; 
I say not that. I earnestly desire that thou shouldest have 
a recompense, not however a mean and small one, but far 
greater ; for in return for gold, I would that thou should- 
est receive heaven for usury. Why shut thyself up in 
poverty, crawling about the earth, and demanding little 
for great ? This is the part of one who knows not how to 
be rich. For when God in return for a little money is 
promising thee the good things of heaven, and thou sayest, 
4 Give me not heaven, but give me instead perishing gold,' 
this is the part of one who desires to continue in poverty." 
(Chrysostom, Sermon on Matt, xxii., 23.) 

"Consider what the usurer does. Undoubtedly he 
desires to give a less sum and to receive a larger ; do thou 
this also ; give thou a little, receive much. And perhaps 
thou wouldest say, 4 To whom then shall I give ? ' The 
self-same Lord, who bade thee not lend upon usury, 
comes forward as the Person to whom thou shouldest lend 
upon usury. ' He that hath pity upon the poor, lendeth 
to the Lord.' Then, though you have no bond from the 



188 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



poor man to compel repayment, yet you have a security. 
Assuredly, if Christ be God, of which there is no doubt, 
He hath Himself said, 4 1 was an hungered, and ye gave 
Me meat.' And when they said to Him, 4 When saw we 
Thee hungry ? ' that He might show Himself to be surety 
for the poor, that He answers for all His members, that 
He is the Head, they the members, and that when the 
members receive, the Head also receiveth, He says, 4 Inas- 
much as ye have done it to one of the least of these that 
belong to Me, ye have done it unto Me.' " (Augustine on 
Psalm xxxvii.) 

4 4 Let no one think that he is the receiver whose hand 
he sees. He indeed received it Who bade thee give. Nor 
will He restore only what He receiveth. He is pleased to 
borrow upon interest. Give the rein now to thine avarice, 
imagine thyself an usurer. Give to God, and press God 
for payment. Nay, rather, give to God, and thou wilt be 
pressed to receive payment." (Augustine on Matt. xix. 

21.) 

4 4 For it is in truth the last pitch of inhumanity that one 
man, in need of the bare necessities of life, should be com- 
pelled to borrow, and another, not satisfied with the return 
of the principal, should seek to make profit for himself out 
of the calamities of the poor. The Lord gave His own 
injunction quite plainly in the words, 4 From him that 
would borrow of thee turn thou not away.' But what of 
the money-lender ? He sees before him a man under stress 
of necessity bent to the ground in supplication. He sees 
him hesitating at no acts, no words, of humiliation. He 
sees him suffering undeserved misfortune, but he is merci- 
less. He does not reckon that he is a fellow-creature. He 
does not give in to his entreaties. He stands stiff and 



NOTES. 



189 



sour. He is moved by no prayers ; his resolution is broken 
by no tears. He persists in refusal, invoking curses on 
his own head if he has any money about him, and swear- 
ing that he is himself on the lookout for a friend to furnish 
him a loan. Then the suppliant mentions interest, and 
utters the word 'security.' All is changed. The frown 
is relaxed. With a genial smile, he recalls old family con- 
nection. Now it is 1 my friend.' ' I will see,' says he, 'if 
I have any money by me. Ah ! yes ; there is that sum 
which an acquaintance has left on deposit in my hands for 
profit. He named very heavy interest. However, I shall 
certainly deduct something, and give you better terms.' 
With pretences of this kind, and talk like this, he fawns 
on the wretched victim, and induces him to swallow the 
bait. Then he binds him with written security, adds loss 
of liberty to the trouble of pressing poverty, and is off. 

44 4 He that hath pity upon the poor, lendeth to the Lord.' 
Do you not desire the Master of the universe to be security 
for your repayment? If any wealthy man in the town 
promises you repayment on behalf of another, do you admit 
his suretyship ? But you do not accept God, Who more 
than repays on behalf of the poor. Give the money lying 
useless, without weighting it with increase, and both shall 
be benefited. To you will accrue the security of its safe- 
keeping. The recipient will have the advantage of its use. 
And if it is increase you seek, be satisfied with that which 
is given by the Lord. He will pay the interest for the 
poor." (Basil on Psalm xiv. Cf. Horn, vii., De Avaratia, 
and Ep. ad Amphilochius, xiv.) 

17 Bishop's Jewell's sermon is an exposition of I. Thess. 
iv. 6. The other extract is from the farewell sermon 
preached by the Rev. David Jones in the Church of St. 



190 THE NEW OBEDIENCE. 



Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street. These two sermons 
are quoted in Fors Clavigera. 

18 This paragraph is a loose quotation from passages in 
that remarkable book, Christianity a Civilized Heathenism, 
which was put into my hands during the progress of these 
addresses in Boston. 

19 Adapted from a collect in the fragmentary Leonine 
Sacramentary. 

20 Cf . The Law of Civilization and Decay, by Brooks 
Adams. 

21 The Reverend Charles Ferguson visited me during the 
revision of this address, and once for all I credit to him all 
that is good in it. 

22 The Ethics of Citizenship, p. 73. 

23 Miss Wilkins has a story (Calla-Lilies and Hannah, 
in A New England Nun) which faithfully illustrates this. 

24 De Incar. Verbi, Cc. xxvii.-xxxii. 

25 In a sensible sermon on " What the Church might do 
for London," preached in St. Edmund's, Lombard Street, 
in Lent, 1895, the Reverend Stewart Headlam maintained 
this proposition with great force. The sermon is printed 
in A Lent in London, p. 127. (Longmans.) 

26 Ethics of Citizenship, p. 46. 

27 Lamennais. 

28 Gregory of Nyssa, nepi tpvxrjt uai dvatirddeGoS, i., 
" Look up to heaven, and consider the depths below ; ex- 
tend thy thought on this side and then on that, to the ends 
of the whole universe ; and enquire what is the power 
which holds these together, and becomes, as it were, a 
bond to unite the whole. Then wilt thou see how spon- 
taneously the idea of the divine power imprints on thy 
mind the figure of the Cross, reaching from the heights 



NOTES. 



191 



above to the depths beneath, and stretching on both sides 
to the utmost bounds of space." 

Cf. Rufinus, Expositio Symb. Apost., xiv. Comment- 
ing upon the great passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians 
concerning "the length and breadth and height," the 
Aquileian begins : Altitudo ergo et latiiudo etprofundum 
descriptio crucis est, and runs on with the thought. Cf. 
Basil, Com. in Is. xi. 12 (cap. 249). 

29 Lactantius, Institutiones Divines , iv. 26. Extendit 
ergo in passione manus suas orbemque dimensus est ut iam 
tunc ostenderet ab ortu solis usque ad occasum magnum 
populum ex omnibus Unguis et tribubus congregatum sub 
alas suas esse venturum, signumque illud maximum atque 
sublime frontibus suis suscepturum. 

30 This wonderful prayer is from the Sacramentary of 
Gelasius. It was the first of the ten solemn prayers con- 
nected with the lessons of Holy Saturday. Cf. Muratori, 
Liturgia Romana Fetus, i. 566, and Bright, Ancient 
Collects, pp. 98-99. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



CANON MASON. 

The Conditions of Our Lord's Life Upon Earth. Being Lectures 
delivered on the Bishop Paddock Foundation in the General Seminary 
at New York, 1896. To which is prefixed part of a First Professorial 
Lecture at Cambridge. By Arthur James Mason, D.D., Lady 
Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and Canon of St. 
Saviour's, Canterbury. Crown 8vo. $1.50 

The Principles of Ecclesiastical Unity : Four Lectures delivered in 
St. Asaph Cathedral on June 16, 17, 18, and 19. By Arthur James 
Mason, D.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and 
Canon of Canterbury, Crown 8vo, 162 pages. $1.00 

REV. H. C. POWELL, M.A. 

The Principle of the Incarnation. With especial reference to the Relation 
between the Lord's Divine Omniscience and His Human Consciousness. 
By the Rev. H. C. Powell, M.A. of Oriel College, Oxford; Rector 
of Wylye, Wilts. 8vo, 504 pages. $4.00 

u In this very painstaking volume Mr. Powell gives us, first, a theory of the 
Incarnation based on the principles of modern psychology; and secondly, a history 
and criticism of the views commonly known as Kenotic. . . . the author's second 
point ... is treated in a very scholarly way, with great clearness and thorough- 
ness," — The Guardian. 

ALFRED G. MORTIMER, D.D. 

Catholic Faith and Practice. A Manual of Theological Instruction for 
Confirmation and First Communion. By the Rev. Alfred G. Morti- 
mer, D.D., Rector of St. Mark's, Philadelphia; Author of " Helps to 
Meditation," " The Seven Last Words of Our Most Holy Redeemer/* 
etc., etc. 8vo, pp. xiv-340. $2.00 

Contents: I. God — II. The Creation and Fall of the Angels — III. The Creation 
and Fall of Man— IV. The Incarnation— V. The Atonement— VI. The Church— 
VII. The Origin of the Church's Doctrine — VIII. Grace and the Sacraments in 
General— IX. Baptism — X. Confirmation — XI. The Sacrament of Penance — XII. Sin 
and Self-Examination — XIII. Conditions Required for Repentance — XIV. The Holy 
Eucharist — As a Sacrament — XV. The Holy Eucharist — The Real Presence — 
XVI. The Holy Eucharist — The Sacrifice — XVII. The Holy Eucharist — The 
Communion— XVIII. The Liturgy— XIX. Prayer— XX. The Rule of Life. 

Helps to Meditation : Sketches for Every Day in the Year. By the 
Rev. A. G. Mortimer, D.D. With an Introduction by the Right Rev. 
' the Bishop of Springfield. 

Vol. I. Advent to Trinity. Twelfth Edition. 8vo. ^$2.50 
Vol. II. Trinity to Advent. Eleventh Edition. 8vo. net %2.$g 

Stories from Genesis : Sermons for Children. By the Rev. A. G. 
Mortimer, D.D. Crown 8vo. $1.00 

** ... . . These Sermons will show how a very valuable foundation of Church 
teaching may be laid in young minds, and how children may be taught to trace the 
vital connection between faith and morality." — The Guardian, London. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, &> CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



THE BISHOP OF VERMONT. 

Chrises Temptation and Ours. By the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, 
D.D., Bishop of Vermont. (The Baldwin Lectures, 1896.) i2mo, cloth. 

$1.00 

Contents: I. The Necessity of Temptation for Man, and Its Possibility for 
Christ — II. The Story of the Temptation, and the Personality of the Tempter — 
III. The Temptation Through the Body — IV. The Temptation to Presumption— 
V. The Temptation of Power — VI. The Passion a Sequel to the Temptation, and 
the Renewal of Its Struggle. 

MORGAN DIX, S.T.D. 

Harriet Starr Cannon, First Mother Superior of the Sisterhood of 
St. Mary, A Brief Memoir by Morgan Dix, sometime Pastor of the 
Community. With 4 plates (2 portraits). Small crown 8vo, cloth, 
gilt top. $1.25 

" The biography of Mother Harriet is a history of one of the most successful 
experiments in community life which our Church has yet enjoyed. . . . The 
wonder is that Dr. Dix should have compressed so much into so small a space. . . . 
there is no undue compression, nothing hasty and nothing overwrought. The life of 
Mother Harriet is an example of holy living and holy dying. She was a brave woman 
and strong, but above all things womanly, and the strength and courage of her 
character were both chastened and invigorated by the blessed assurance of an accepted 
self-consecration." — The Church Standard, 



REV. E. G. MURPHY. 

The Larger Life. Sermons and an Essay. By the Rev. Edgar Gardner 
Murphy. With an Introduction by the Bishop Coadjutor of Southern 
Ohio. Crown 8vo. $1.50 
Contents : I. The Christian's Knowing — II. The Sabbath Principle and the 
Sabbath Spirit— III. The Heart and the Earth— IV. A Parable of Confidence— 
V. The Brother of the Prodigal — VI. Essential Churchmanship— VII. The Practising 
of Religion— VIII. The Life and the Work— IX. The Church's Book— X. The 
Meaning of the Books — XI. The Unperfected Church— XII. Formalism and Liber- 
alism — XIII. God's Evidence for God — XIV. The Social Prophecy of Jesus Christ — 
XV. For the Easter Faith— XVI. The Continuing Cross— XVII. The Reverence of 
Science and the Appeal of the Resurrection — XVIII. The New Religion and the 
Modern Mind. An Essay. 

ELEANOR TEE. 

The Sanctuary of Suffering. By Eleanor Tee, Author of "This 
Everyday Life," etc. With a Preface by the Rev. J. P. F. Davidson, 
M A Vicar of S. Matthias, Earl's Court. Crown 8vo. 387 pages. 

$2.00 

" The author writes with a freshness and ease of expression that make 

the book the most delightful reading. ... We know of no book more calculated 
to help one in trouble, more free from anything that is morbid, more full of divine 
love, better calculated to teach truth without arousing prejudice, nor written in a 
more happy and sympathetic style."— Church Eclectic, Milwaukee. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 



REV. WILLIAM BAYARD HALE. 

The New Obedience. A Plea for Social Submission to Christ. By 
William Bayard Hale, Mission Priest of the Church of Our Saviour, 
Middleboro, Mass. i2mo, cloth. $1.25 

Contents: I. The Authority of Truth— II. The Code and the Issue— III. The 
New and Great Commandment — IV. The Coming Kingdom— V. The'Present Duty — 
VI. The New Freedom— VII. The Certain Triumph— Notes. 



THE LATE CANON LIDDON. 

Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, 1860-1889. By H. P. 

Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., late Canon and Chancellor of St. 
Paul's. Crown 8vo. $2.00 

*** A collection of some of the carefully prepared Occasional Sermons published by 
Dr. Liddon, which has the interest of illustrating the style of his preaching at different 
periods during the thirty most active years of his life. The volume is uniform in 
general size and style with the set of the author's works printed in crown octavo. 



REV. B. W. MATURIN, D.D. 

Some Principles and Practices of the Spiritual Life. By the Rev. 
B. W. Maturin, Mission Priest of the Society of St. John the Evan- 
gelist, Cowley, Oxford. Crown 8vo. $1.50 

" The tone of the book is thoroughly healthy, and the manner of spiritual life 
which it seeks to foster is of the most robust and manly sort. We have never found 
the topics of which it treats grasped with a firmer or truer hand, nor presented in a 
more persuasive form. We believe the book will become a devotional classic, and 
take rank with such works as 11 The Light of the Conscience " and " The Hidden Life 
of the Soul."— Living Church. 



Teachings from the Parables. By the Rev. B. W. Maturin. Crown 
8vo. \_Just ready. 



REV. ARTHUR HEBER BROWNE, M.A. 

Wearied with the Burden : a Book of Daily Readings for Lent. By 
Rev. Arthur Heber Browne, M.A., LL.D., Rector of St. John's, 
and Canon of Newfoundland Cathedral. Crown 8vo. $1.25 

" The Meditations in this volume are to some extent adapted either for reading in 
church — a custom which appears to be now very general in Lent — after Matins or 
Evensong, or for the private use of those who may be prevented from attendance at 
the daily offices. These readings endeavor to follow very closely the lines of thought 
marked out by the Church for her children's guidance during the Lenten season. 
Each Meditation is based upon the Gospel for the day, and deals with some link in 
the " Chain of our Sins," as it appears in the light of our Blessed Lord's life and 
teaching." — Extract from Preface. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



WYLLYS REDE, D.D. 

Striving for the Mastery. Daily Lessons for Lent. By the Rev. 
Wyllys Rede, D.D., Canon of the Cathedral and Rector of the 
Church of the Incarnation, Atlanta, Georgia. $1.00 

This book claims the attention of all those, both clergy and laity, who are form- 
ing their plans for Lent. It consists of a series of forty ten-minute addresses or 
readings, following a systematic line of thought throughout the holy season. 
It will appeal especially to two classes of people : 

1. Hard-worked parish priests, who do not find time for the preparation of such 
a series every year, and yet desire to help their people to draw nigh to God in 
the practice of devout meditation during Lent. 

2. Christian people who are accustomed to spend some part of each day in Lent 
in spiritual reading, and many of whom are deprived of Church privileges. 

The clergy will find these addresses well suited for reading at the daily services 
in Church, and people who cannot attend such services will find them equally 
adapted for morning or evening reading and meditation at home. 
Contents : First Week in Lent. The mastery over self — Keeping under the 
body — Governing the mind — Bridling the tongue— The subjugation of the 
will. Second Week. The mastery over temptation— The trial of our faith — 
Does God lead us into temptation ?— Is it a sin to be tempted ? — Temptation 
to distrust God— Temptation to presumption and false confidence — Tempta- 
tion to do evil that good may come. Third Week. The mastery over the 
world. Is the world our friend or our enemy ? — Overcoming the evil that is in 
the world — Overcoming the world by faith— Non-conformity to the world — 
Crucifying the world — The profit and loss of worldliness. Fourth Week. The 
mastery over adversity— The school of life — The mastery by poverty of spirit — 
By meekness— By mourning — By peace-making— Through persecution. Fifth 
Week. The mastery over sin — The mystery of iniquity — The pervasiveness of 
sin— The deceitfulness of sin— The lawlessness of sin — The malignity of sin — 
The mystery of godliness. Sixth Week. The mastery over suffering — Betrayal 
— Misjudgment — Poverty — Sufferings of the body — Sufferings of the soul — The 
reward of suffering. Holy Week. The mastery over death— What is death ? 
— Obedience unto death — Love stronger than death — The blessing of a finished 
life—The surrender of the soul— After death. 

The Communion of Saints. By the Rev. Wyllys Rede, D.D. With 
a Preface by Lord Halifax. Crown 8vo. $1.25 

" The book is valuable as a clear exposition of the teaching of the Church concern- 
ing the fellowship, the brotherhood which in her mind exists between all who are 
baptized into the Church of Christ, whether living or departed. And it will be 
found no less valuable as affording the truest and most efficacious consolation to 
all the sad company of those who grieve because their friends are not. One turns 
away with almost angry impatience from the wearisome commonplaces with 
which many good people seek to bind up the breaking heart, for they act like salt 
upon a raw wound. It is only in the truth that all are one in Christ— the doctrine 
of the Communion of Saints — that any healing for such sorrow resides. There- 
fore, both on this account and for the clear statement of this doctrine, the book is 
a very valuable one, and deserves to be not only widely read by church people, but 
carefully digested." — Pacific Churchman. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 1 S PUBLICATIONS. 



REV. C. ERNEST SMITH. 

In the Household of Faith. By the Rev. C. Ernest Smith, M.A., 
Rector of the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Baltimore, Md. ; 
Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Maryland. i2mo, pp. xL-295. 

$1.25. 

" The work is fully up with the times, and apt illustrations drawn from peri- 
odical literature make it a valuable repository of facts pertinent to the important 
questions here treated. . . . The reading of this book . . . will be a pleasant 
and profitable task for all who love the Church." — Churchman, New York. 

Call to Confirmation. A Manual of Instruction for Candidates. By 

the Rev. C. Ernest Smith, M. A. Paper, 12 cents net; cloth, 25 cents. 

"... Admirable in plan and execution. . . . Just the kind of thing we 
have long been looking for. ... It will be found most helpful in this most 
difficult and delicate duty of properly preparing Candidates for Confirmation." — 
Church Affairs, Easton, Md. 

The Old Church in the New Land. Lectures on Church History. By 
the Rev. C. Ernest Smith, M.A. With a Preface by the Bishop of 
Maryland. Crown 8vo, cloth. $1.25. 

"We heartily endorse the recommendation of the Bishop of Maryland, and we 
go farther : we should say that this little book is perhaps the very best historical 
account of the Church of England for family reading - that we have ever seen ; and 
an attentive congregation, to which these lectures should be read, would be well 
prepared to vindicate the position of the Anglican Church against the assaults of 
either Rome or Geneva. It is not a controversial book, but its statements are so 
plain as to make argument superfluous." — The Church Standard. 

41 These lectures deserve all the praise we can give them. We strongly recom- 
mend their addition to parish libraries, and their study to teachers, lay readers, 
and to not a few of the clergy. They retell the story of the old Church in the new 
land with an accuracy of detail both in fact and doctrine that is refreshing, and 
with a style as vigorous and pointed as it is clear." — The American Church 
Almanag, 1895. 

*' Here is a book for every member of the Brotherhood to own and study. Mr. 
Smith very justly says : 4 A knowledge of some of the chief facts in the history of 
the Church has become almost a necessity to every Churchman, and there are, con- 
sequently, few subjects upon which lecture-sermons can more appropriately be 
preached in our day than on Church History, especially on the history of our own 
branch. To some persons this may seem a very unedifying kind of a subject ; 
they prefer what is known as " Gospel preaching ; " they have, indeed, no interest 
in any other ; and if, unfortunately, they are compelled to listen to any other, 
they imagine there is no help in it, and are none the better for it, but rather the 
worse.' 

"This is all true enough, and when this instruction is given with a clearness 
and freshness that illuminate the subject, it becomes a pleasure as well as a duty 
to receive it. . . . With a scholarship which is never heavy, with a belief 
in the Catholic Church which never descends into mere partisanism, the lectures, 
in the words of the Bishop of Maryland, who writes the preface, admirably fulfil 
their purpose to trace the links of that continuity (between the Church in America 
and the Church in England), to make Churchmen feel sure through them of an 
apostolic origin, to help them know that this is no late-born sect, but that in it we 
are in the very 'fellowship of the Apostles.' . . . Make yourself a . . . 
present of this book, read it, digest it, and then lend it as widely as possible 
among your friends."— St. Andrew's Cross. 

"The whole story is told in strong and clear outline, in a very interesting and 
instructive way, and any one who follows the plain teaching in this little volume 
cannot fail to be convinced of the identity of our Church with that Church which 
the Lord Jesus founded. We wish that every layman would read it, for we are 
sure he would find it full of strength and truth."— The Living Church, 



A SELECTED LIST 



OF THEOLOGICAL BOOKS 

PUBLISHED BY 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., NEW YORK 



REV, ALFRED G. MORTIMER, D.D. 

The Seven Last Words of Our Most Holy Redeemer. With Medi- 
tations on Some Scenes in His Passion. By the Rev. Alfred G. Mor- 
timer, D.D., Rector of St. Mark's, Philadelphia. i2mo. $1.00 

Contents : Meditations on the Passion — I. The Scourging of our Blessed Lord 
— II. The Mockery of our Blessed Lord — III. The Presentation of our Blessed 
Lord to the People— IV. The Cross-bearing of our Blessed Lord— V. The Pierc- 
ing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ— VI. The Uplifting of the Cross of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

The Three Hours' Agony of our Lord Jesus Christ — Introductory Address 
—The First Word— The Second Word— The Third Word— The Fourth Word— 
The Fifth Word— The Sixth Word— The Seventh Word. 

"The Meditations in this volume were given in Lent (1895) in St. Mark's, 
Philadelphia, at noon on Fridays. Though complete in themselves, they are really 
a continuation of a course on the Passion of our Blessed Lord which had been de- 
livered in St. Mark's the previous Lent. In the latter course the Passion had 
been treated as witnessing as a whole to certain moral virtues. In the present 
series a few scenes in the Passion have been taken in relation to the individual 
soul. The Addresses on the Seven Last Words were given in the same church at 
the Three Hours 1 Service on Good Friday, 1895. Together they form a consecu- 
tive series of Meditations for Holy Week or for the Fridays in Lent. 1 '— Extract 
from Preface. 



BISHOP A. C. A. HALL. 

The Virgin Mother. Retreat Addresses on the Life of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, as Told in the Gospels. With an Appended Essay on 
the Virgin Birth of Our Lord. By the Rt. Rev. A. C A. Hall, D.D., 
Bishop of Vermont. i2mo. $1.25 

44 It is often said, and the saying is true, that Protestantism and Anglicanism 
have lost something of sweet Christian tenderness in their extreme reaction from 
the semi-idolatrous cultus of the Blessed Virgin which prevailed in the Middle 
Ages. We have not the slightest tendency to that form of doctrinal aberration ; 
nor would it be possible, we suppose, for any clear-minded Englishman or Ameri- 
can to join in the glowing but hyperbolical addresses to the Mother of our Lord 
which are found in the liturgies of Oriental Churches ; yet it does seem that some- 
thing has been lost in our habitual forgetfulness of the human being to whom our 
blessed Lord in His earthly life was nearest and dearest, and who, doubtless, of 
all the sons and daughters of men, was— nay, perhaps still is— nearest and dear- 
est to Him. In this little volume, Bishop Hall very admirably and delicately dis- 
courses of the Blessed Virgin with the reverent affection which is due to her, and 
yet without the slightest approach to the extravagances which our Church has 
rightly and wisely banished. In a brief appendix he has written a few timely- 
words on the subject of the virgin birth of our Lord, considered as an article of 
the Christian faith."— The Church Standard, Philadelphia. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 1 S PUBLICATIONS. 



AIDS TO THE INNER LIFE. Edited by the Rev. W. H. Hutch- 
ings, M.A., Rector of Kirkby Misperton, Yorkshire. 5 volumes, each 
volume sold separately, as follows : 

32mo, cloth limp. $0.25 
321x10, cloth extra. .50 

Of the Imitation of Christ. By Thomas a Kempis. In Four 
Books. 

The Christian Year. Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holy 
Days throughout the Year. 

The Devout Life. By St. Francis de Sales. 

The Hidden Life of the Soul. From the French of Jean Nicolas 
Grou. 

The Spiritual Combat. Together with the Supplement and the 
Path of Paradise. By Laurence Scupoli. 

Uniform with the above : 

The Light of the Conscience. By H. L. Sidney Lear. 
The Spiritual Letters of St. Francis de Sales. 

AVANCINI. Vita et Doctrina Jesu Christi. Ex Quatuor Evan- 
gelistis collecta et in Meditationum Materiam ad Singulos totius Anni 
Dies distributa. Per N. Avancinum, S. J. Ad usum Cleri Anglicani 
accommodavit Presbyter Ignotus. Editio Secunda. i8mo. $1.00 

" Besides its original purpose as a help to meditation, Avancini would make a 
valuable help to the preparation of short sermons. There are in all some 400 
meditations, and each meditation has three points. Almost every one of these 
points would bear amplification into a sermon a few minutes long ; and, if the 
book were used in this way we should hear less than we do from the clergy oi 
the difficulty of preparation, and from the laity of the extent to which it is omitted." 
— Guardian. 

BALFOUR. The Foundations of Belief : Being Notes Introductory 
to the Study of Theology. By the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, 
M. P. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. $2. of 

BATHE. Works by Anthony Bathe, M.A. 

What I Should Believe. A Simple Manual of Self-instruction foi 
Church People. Crown 8vo. $0.75 

A Lent with Jesus. A Plain Guide for Churchmen. Containing 
Readings for Lent and Easter Week, and on the Holy Eucharist. $0.40 

The Christian's Roadbook. By Anthony Bathe and F. H. Buck- 
ham, Vicar of Sledmere, Yorkshire. 

Part I. Devotions. i6mo, cloth limp. $0.35 
Part II. Readings. With an Introduction by W. J. Knox Little, 
M. A., Canon of Worcester. i6mo, cloth limp. $0.75 



LONGMANS, GREEN, <5r» CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



BENSON. The Final Passover : A Series of Meditations upon the 
Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. By the Rev. R. M. Benson, M.A., 
Student of Christ Church, Oxford. i2mo, cloth. 

< Vol. I. The Rejection. $2.00 
Vol. II. The Upper Chamber. Two parts. Each, 1.75 

Part I. The Last Supper. Part II. The Final Discourse and Prayer. 
Vol. III. The Divine Exodus. Two parts. Each, $1.75 

Vol. IV. The Life Beyond the Grave. 2.00 

" It is a book which may be used with the greatest advantage by Christians of 
every school and creed, without any fear of being jarred by the conflict of views 
at variance with their own. For it is not a book of views and opinions, but of deep 
and profound spiritual devotion. 1 ' — Pacific Churchman, San Francisco. 

BIRCH. The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the 
Teaching of the Primitive Church and of Anglican Divines. By 

Edward Jonathan Birch, M.A., Rector of Overstone and Hon. 
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